


Murky Waters

by Nekositting



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Dark, Dreams vs. Reality, Emotional Manipulation, Erotic Horror, Explicit Sexual Content, Extremely Dubious Consent, F/M, Metaphors, Mind Manipulation, Psychological Horror, Rape/Non-con Elements, Tumblr: tomione-day, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-15
Updated: 2018-11-15
Packaged: 2019-05-07 11:41:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 28,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14670342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nekositting/pseuds/Nekositting
Summary: “Do I frighten you?”Lips pressed against her ear, an arctic wind settling over her spine. It drained her of her warmth, left her with nothing but the chill its words only could evoke in her.“Good—”Hermione’s vision swam, the constant flow of water along her back dissipating into nothing. It was as if she’d been stripped bare. Unmade in that moment. She was only consciousness, only a mind wading through the nebulous unknown.“—Remember this fear, Hermione.”





	1. Whispers in the Dark

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! Welcome to my early submission for Tomione day! I will post the rest on the day, but I just wanted to share with you all a bit of what I have cooking up :)
> 
> Leave comments if you like!
> 
> This is also a prompt fill from an anon!

Hermione wasn’t sure when the dreams first began. They had always been a part of her. A nebulous and amorphous entity that lingered along the corners of her eyes.

At first, she’d ignored it. Convinced that it was only because she was exhausted. Drained by the daily ins and outs of her life. After all, what other explanation could there be? She was working twelve-hour days and volunteering on most weekends for pro-bono work. It was a hard, onerous life that she led. Satisfying, but no less exhausting if the dark circles around her eyes said anything about it.

So of course, it was  _ easy  _ to forget one’s own self-care when swamped with millions of other things. The life of a lowly associate at a medium-sized firm tended to do that to a person, after all. The pay wasn’t great and the work that one put was meaningless in the grand scheme of things.

She loved her job. Truly. She doubted she could do any other work, the challenge of researching the law and working her mind to win the case one that she doubted any other field might provide. 

That, however, did not mean that she wasn’t  _ tired _ . No, she was eroding herself down to the marrow of her bones, each case like sandpaper on a rough surface grinding and  _ grinding  _ away at her. A mortar and pestle crushing her down to microscopic particles, where nothing and no one, could  _ see  _ what she’d become. 

With each case she was handed, with each snide remark by her co-workers when they saw her strut in with her thrift-store designer suit and her frizzy hair, she lost sight of herself. Her needs secondary to the pressures of daily living, to the demands of her clients and the mounds of work her colleagues dumped on her.

As if she were nothing more than a glorified intern rather than a  _ paid  _ attorney at their firm.

It was unfair. An injustice she suffered through for simply being a  _ novice _ , for graduating at the top of her class and subjecting herself to the caprices of a field that cared little for her knowledge when she lacked experience.

It had been a bitter pill to swallow, the economy in ruins doing little to salvage her hope as she sought desperately for jobs. 

But that was life. She’d resigned herself to this, accepted that she would wilt away for a few years in this hellhole of a firm and then rise from the ashes reborn once she’d acquired all the experience she needed. It wouldn’t take long. The supervising attorneys and partners already handed her much of the work, anyway.

So in the grand scheme of things, her mental and physical health was the least of her concerns. The shadows curling at the back of her eyelids were meaningless. An issue easily forgotten when there were hundreds of other hurdles demanding a bite at the apple, snapping and clawing up her arms until she had no other choice but to lay those demons to rest.

If only the demons lurking in her mind would rest too when she wished them to.

Hermione laid on her bed, curls pulled into a messy bun. She’d been staring at the dark ceiling for hours now, sleep eluding her after she’d been berated by her supervisor earlier that afternoon for misplacing the files to a hearing scheduled that same day. It didn’t matter that she’d made photocopies of the important documents for the case nor that she herself had reviewed them religiously in anticipation of the hearing. 

Her boss had not been pleased, and that alone was reason enough to lose all desire to rest. It’d been  _ careless  _ of her, after all. Hermione Granger simply did not  _ lose  _ files. It was unheard of. Hell, if anyone in her class heard that  _ the  _ Hermione Granger had done something as silly as that, they’d think the apocalypse upon them. Perfect, hard-working, Hermione Granger would  _ never  _ do such a thing.

What utter bollocks. 

Ever since she’d started this job and stretching herself thin with her own activities outside of the firm, she’d been prone to such mistakes. There was only so much the human body could take, and she, was at her limit. 

It was the only explanation she had to the shadow standing right at the edge of the bedroom. Its presence like static, unheard and unseen, but so  _ real  _ that there was no doubt in mind that she was losing it. She hadn’t closed her eyes for longer than a second, hadn’t felt the sweet lull of slumber pull at her as it always did right when she usually drifted off.

There was no reason that there was a shadow there...standing, watching her,  _ gazing  _ into her face with an intensity that made her skin crawl. It wasn’t  _ real _ . It couldn’t be. 

And yet—

Hermione closed her eyes and bit her lip. She took a deep breath through her nose, counting the seconds that it took to completely fill her lungs before releasing it. 

_ One. Two. Three. _

Then, she opened her eyes. 

The shadow was gone. Its presence had flickered from existence in the time it’d taken her to gather her bearings and settle her breaths into a manageable state.

Relief spread through her. A warm sensation bloomed low in her belly, trickling from the center and out until her fingers tingled with it. It was nice. 

The closest to peace she’d been in a long time. She didn’t know she’d been tense until she’d finally relaxed, the unease and fear of the shadow standing right at her door too much, even for her. 

Then, just as she sank deeper into that warmth. The soothing pull of slumber was wrenched away, a streak of white and red flashing along her vision. A bright streak, like lightning in a darkened room.

And then there was a face, a gaunt serpentine face a centimeter away from hers. 

Hermione screamed, and  _ screamed _ , but she could not move. 

She was weighed down. As if someone had sewn her flesh into the mattress, crushed not only by the stitching of the fabric, but by the suffocating weight of this creature sitting on her chest. 

It was monstrous. Its eyes bore into her own, bright and inhuman. Its face assessing, its mouth curled into a cruel smile that made her spine shudder with terror. 

Hermione wanted to shut her eyes, to run and be free. The compulsion was incessant. A cry in the back of her mind that reverberated like a choir of children singing at mass. Endlessly, it urged her to  _ move _ , to  _ run _ , but Hermione couldn’t. Her limbs only twitched in reply to her commands. 

“W-what—?”

“Shhh.” The creature interrupted, its sibilant voice enough to raise the hairs of her bare forearms. 

“You’ll wake him.”

If Hermione hadn’t been so terrified, she’d have asked it what it meant. She had no bloody idea what it was talking about, what it could fucking  _ mean.  _ It was only her and the monster. There were no others in the room with her last time she checked unless—

Hermione gasped when the creature lowered its mouth until their breaths mingled, the stench of iron and earth pungent in her nostrils. It made her gag, made bile rise up her esophagus. 

“He’s here. Waiting.” It said, its mouth grazing her lips in the process. Hermione tried not to shudder, repulsed when its smile only widened in response, a row of white teeth flashing underneath the shadows of her room. “Waiting for you to sleep. Waiting for you to  _ see _ .”

Hermione swallowed before she gathered enough courage to respond.

“S-see what?” 

The creature remained silent for a moment, eyes boring uncomfortably into her face before it shifted, the pressure on her chest making her lungs ache. 

Then, with a soft, almost crooning voice, it spoke.

“ _ Him.” _

* * *

Hermione shot awake, her heart beating rapidly in her chest. 

The image of the creature’s eyes clung to the back of her eyelids. Bright and malignant, horror and the rancid taste of its breath a thick muck that sat in the back of her tongue. She gagged, and nearly vomited over herself, the mere memory of the dream and the way the creature watched her with its knowing eyes too much for her to bear.

_ God. _

Her heart refused to slow, her eyes shooting every which way in her bedroom for any sign of the shadow, horrified that it might flit about her sight just as it had done in her dream…

_ Dream. That’s all it is, Hermione. A dream. _

The thought was of little comfort. It had felt too real, the shadows and the way the creature’s flesh wrinkled along its mouth, like fault lines at the bottom of the mediterranean sea. Every crevice, every speck of red and garnet in its gaze had been easily discerned. The distance between their faces nothing. Microscopic. 

Hermione inched her back against the headboard of her bed, her shoulders shaking; no longer capable of sleep now that she was awake.

The soft light from the digital clock on her bedside drew her attention after she scouted her room for the hundredth time, more certain now that it wasn’t there. That it all had been a dream, a shite dinner and another rough day at work the reason for the nightmare. 

_ 3/22 Wednesday. 3:30 A.M. _

Hermione sucked in a breath through her teeth, plopping herself back into bed. Frustration curled over her brows, and her lips puckered into an irritated line. 

Only three hours of sleep. 

Only three hours of  _ bloody  _ sleep. She’d have to get up in about an hour and thirty minutes. 

Hermione was not looking forward to the rest of the week. Friday could not get there any faster.


	2. Shadows in Your Dreams

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's that time again :)
> 
> Leave a comment if you like the story!

Hermione was going to kill her supervisor. This was the final straw.

It was Thursday evening, and she was still sitting at the office preparing files for the four hearings scheduled the following Monday.

There was no end to the mounds of files on her desk. The stack was at least a foot above her head, the space on her desk so cluttered that it’d be a miracle if anyone could see her from the other end of the office.

It was miserable and not what she wanted to be doing that evening. It was already eight in the evening and she doubted she’d be leaving until at least ten that night at the rate things were going. One particular file was giving her trouble—the case was old, too old to still be sitting in some judge’s docket, and yet here we are—and her supervisor was not answering his phone.

Typical. He could afford weekends, but when it came to her tasks, she had to slave away and hope that everything was perfect by the time he got back.

...She should honestly look for another job.

_Shhhhk._

A sharp sound shattered the silence.

Hermione jolted, knee catching on the end of her desk. She cursed under her breath and turned her attention to where she’d  _thought_ she heard the sound. It was distinct. Like nails against a chalkboard.

She was certain it had come from somewhere behind her. Perhaps the kitchen? It was the only place where they even had glass. No one was allowed to bring glass to the office area, the justification being that they’d had one too many incidents with spilling food and drinks on sensitive files.

It was all bollocks to her, really. It was only to drive the point that they were slaves to the wage and nothing more. At least, as it pertained to the lower level associates like herself.

Hermione rose from her seat, the creak of her chair like a gunshot in an empty parking lot. It made the hairs at the nape of her neck stand on end, unease rousing to life at the emptiness of the office. It wasn’t unusual to be stuck there late. She’d been at the office till almost three in the morning in the past, handling a massive class-action lawsuit.

But something was different.

The computers were all shut off, except for her own. The lights from the halls turned off, except for the lamp sitting right beside her computer. All by some extension related to her.

Except for one lone light. A dim yellow light right at the end of the room. Right where the kitchen was and the strange sound had come from.

 _Don’t be silly. Someone might have just left the light on. Maybe it had even been_ you  _this evening._

With that thought, Hermione squared her shoulders and headed to the kitchen. Her high-heeled shoes clicked on the tile floor, the echoes of her footsteps heightening rather than dissolving the growing tension in the air.

An anxious energy thrummed just beneath her skin. Wanting to be heard, to be _entertained_ , but Hermione ignored it, knowing well that it was just  _ridiculous_. There was nothing different about this night. It was just like all the others.

She always worked late. It was a part of her duties as an associate to make sure that everything was ready by the time she stepped into work the following week. It was how these things went. The norm.

It shouldn’t have made her heart rate pick up, it shouldn’t have made her hands sweaty with her nerves. It was stupid, and she knew it, but there was no arguing against this instinctual response. It demanded to be heard, to be  _obeyed_ , and for all her determination to quell these emotions, she was only human.

It didn’t take her long to curve around the small cubicles that lined the space. The paralegals often sat there, their own personal items littered about the space as if they were permanent fixtures in the room. It was sad that most of their paralegals quit about a month or two into the job. Not even the fifteen an hour pay was worth the workload and the shite work environment.

Turning her gaze away, Hermione passed through the open doorway that opened out to the short hall. The light was stronger now. It was no longer the faint glimmer of before, rousing her attention only because of the sound cutting through her thoughts while contemplating quitting her job.

Her gaze cut along the hall, searching for a sign of another presence.

It was empty. Just as she had expected. The same landscape paintings were on the walls. The same old couch was pressed against the opposite wall, down the end of the hall where clients were typically asked to sit. Everything was as it should be.

So why did her heart still feel as if it were ready to crawl up her throat at any moment’s notice?

The open doorway to the kitchen bled into the opposite wall. A square of yellow light that spanned most of the hallway. But just as she was about to cross it, to pass over the open space and turn into the kitchen, she stopped. Unnerved.

 _Move, Hermione, bloody_ move.

Her limbs refused to listen. Her legs were planted stubbornly on the ground, as if the very idea of turning that corner went against its very nature. It made little to no sense to her. None of this did.

Hermione released a frustrated breath, counting to ten and back.

 _It’s fine. It’s_ fine.

With a stubborn set to her jaw, Hermione took a step, and then another. It became easier with each one she took, until Hermione was finally rounding that corner and looking into the small kitchen wedged between the offices and the client sitting area.

Everything was as it should be.

There was no one else in there. There were some utensils and plates stacked in the sink. The microwave door was shut, as it should be, and the fridge was whirring away. Frankly, the most terrifying thing about the kitchen was that it wasn’t  _clean_.

Annoyance bloomed in her stomach, lips screwing into a thin line at being pulled away from her tasks for something as silly as this. She thought she’d heard something, but perhaps, it was the office next door? Maybe it was that something had fallen in the sink as was common to happen when someone left a plate or cup on the edge?

Lord knew how many times her dishwasher had scared her silly when it flickered to life randomly in the evenings.

Her shoulders slumped after a moment, her eyes looking around the room for good measure, in case she missed something obvious in her exhaustion. Her vision was a bit blurry as of late, the blue screen and the late nights were not helping matters either.

“ _Hermione.”_

A shriek tore from her throat.

A voice, a  _sibilant and high-pitched voice_ , had murmured her name into her ear.

Her heart beat wildly in her chest, her hand clasping against chest to settle her nerves. But there was no calming her down, no settling her pulse to a more manageable state.

Not when a shadow stood at the far end of the doorway. Black and ill-fitting.

How this was possible, Hermione had no idea.

It was just  _wrong._

How was it possible for it to be all the way there when it had _just_ spoken right against her ear? How was any of this even possible? The shadowy figure was directly beneath the light. The exposure should have revealed its face, should have shown her bright eyes and lips.  _Something_.

But it was black in its entirety. A solid block of nothing that made her breath catch, her fingers clench into tight fists before she sprang, terrified, toward the sink in search of a knife, of some sort of weapon she could use.

Fingers clawed with no direction inside the sink, reaching the bottom for something sharp that she could use. Water splashed, smearing her black skirt with dirty water, but Hermione paid it no mind. Her clothes were the least of her concerns, not when there was a  _thing_ standing right at her back.

There was no telling what it could do, what it  _would do_.

_Just like your nightmare._

Pain shot up her spine when her finger caught on the sharp end up a steak knife. She snatched her hand back, hand wet and red with blood, the rivulets gushing from the wound at an alarming rate. She inspected the cut, her attention momentarily derailed away from the creature, staring at a wide, gaping cut right along her thumb.

The edges of the fissure were bright pink, and Hermione had half a mind to suck it into her mouth when she heard a faint shuffling sound behind her.

The creature was still there. Waiting.

Hermione lunged back into the sink and yanked out, by pure luck, a small steak knife. Possibly the same one that had injured her.

She turned around, braver than she’d been moments earlier, ready to fight to the death—

But the creature wasn’t there. It’d vanished just as quickly as it’d appeared.

_Just like your nightmare._

Hermione’s heart was beating a mile a minute, a droplet of sweat dripping from the nape of her neck and down to the collar of her blouse.

She wanted to follow after the shadow. It was undeniable that she’d seen it, heard it murmur her name. Her skin still tingled from where its breath had curled around her neck, heat congealed at the lobe of her ear from when it’d brushed against her skin.

Swallowing, Hermione stepped toward the entrance way with the knife in hand.

It was stupid that she was following it, that she was putting so much in stock to something that  _had_ to be a figment of her imagination.

Still, she had to be sure. She needed to know for certain that it was all made up. It was better to think she was crazy than face the reality that she wasn’t alone in the office.

She stepped through the doorway and into the darkness, the light from her computer the only thing illuminating her path as she turned back toward her desk.

Nothing was amiss. The air was still and lifeless.

Oppressive, but it was obvious that there was no one else there but her.

That did nothing to settle her nerves, however. She doubted anything would, not until she left the office and went back home where she had at least some modicum of safety.

She didn’t lower the knife, passing the paralegals’ cubicles and rounding the corner to her desk.

_Shhhk._

Nearly dropping the knife, Hermione swiveled around on unsteady feet, knuckles white from how tightly she gripped the knife. The sound had come from somewhere close behind her. So close, in fact, that it was not difficult to pinpoint where the source of it was.

It was standing directly behind her. She was certain of it.

Hermione grit her teeth, a slow and deep breath escaping her lungs. Her tongue licked the sharp ends of her teeth as she tried to gather the courage to speak.

“I know you’re there.”

There was no response. Her beating heart and the whirring of her computer were the only sounds in the empty room.

“I don’t know who you think you are, but you should go. I can forget you were ever here.”

There was no sign that the figure was still there. She was seemingly alone.

Hermione didn’t trust it. She didn’t trust herself to turn around and not frighten herself into a stupor should her suspicions prove true. She didn’t want to imagine how she’d react if the creature were standing directly behind her.

It was certainly possible that it could be inches away. Ready to touch her, to press what she imagined claw-like hands through her hair.

Hermione shuddered, tempted more than ever to look. She shouldn’t, she knew. It was how all the horror movies she’d seen went. It was how one ended up dead, how all the books her friends back home made her read turned out.

The silence drew on for what felt like an eternity. It trickled by without a single disruption. Her fear was lodged firmly in her esophagus, and she doubted that it would change the longer she did nothing.

It was as if it were waiting for her to break, as if it  _knew_ that she would.

She hated that it wasn’t wrong.

With a slow, reedy breath, Hermione whirled around.

Nothing.

Hermione heaved a relieved sigh, shoulders dropping despite herself. It was instinctive. The tension had nearly snapped her in two.

She had anticipated a face. A monstrous white face with red eyes and sharp pointed teeth.

Hermione didn’t know what that creature was, but she never wanted to dream of it again. No. Not if she could help it.

With that thought, Hermione turned her attention back to her computer. The screen was black, the monitor light a blinking red that indicated it’d gone on standby. The lamp by its side was still lit, and Hermione quickly stepped toward it, hyper-focused on the click of her shoes on the ground.

Nothing jumped out at her on her short walk. The place had fallen into the same tense silence as before, but there was a notable weight over her now. As if she was being stared down. Watched through an unknown lens like some specimen splayed beneath the inquiring gaze of a scientist.

It was...unsettling.

She stood still for a moment or two longer. Waiting for god knows what even when she knew that it was stupid to stay still. Her best recourse would be to leave. It was the logical choice. The one sensible Hermione would make.

But there was  _nothing_ sensible about being hunted down by something she wasn’t even sure was real.

No, if she had sense, she’d be packing up the work she’d been unable to finish and leave.  

_Just go Hermione. Just go home, it’s been a long day._

Hermione eyed her computer for a moment, recalling in that instance that she needed to save the motion she’d been drafting before she could even think to leave. She wanted to stamp her feet in frustration at that, to simply tell her supervisors to go _fuck_ themselves and do it themselves.

_Arseholes._

She moved toward it, knowing well that she wasn’t going to throw this in their faces. This was still her job, and she would not risk her license for something as petty as this.

She leaned down to press the power button, watching the old Dell computer slowly explode with color. She blinked repeatedly, blinded by the intense white, cursing the fact that her bosses refused to invest in something more  _modern_ —

Something flashed by the corner of her eye. It was a faint flicker of red, a blinking light capable of drawing the attention of all within the room with its incessant blinking.

Hermione swallowed, fingers clenching into fists. The motion and the files she needed to finish were immediately forgotten, her fear eclipsing the annoyance and inconvenience of coming into work on a weekend to manage the files.

Then, the blinking stopped. It lapsed into nothing, but Hermione’s shoulders remained tense, strung up so tightly that she feared they might splinter.

A waft of warm air pressed against her throat, and Hermione struggled to keep herself still. She’d nearly jumped,  _screamed_ until her throat ached when something hot slithered along the sliver of skin exposed by the open collar of her blouse.

Her fingernails bit into the palms of her hands, but she did not move, for in that second, a hot hand clasped over her trembling palm, sharp nails running along her knuckles.

“ _Hermione.”_

It hissed into her neck, unseen lips speaking her name as if it were a prayer.

“ _Soon—”_

Hermione’s throat went dry.

_It’s not real. It’s not real. It’s not real._

She chanted the words over and over.

“— _You shall see.”_

* * *

Hermione shot up with a gasp, dried tears streaming from her eyes.

The world around her was lit in bright colors. Streams of it oozed from the windows, from the walls, from the closet on the other end of her room—

_ My room? _

When had she gotten there? When had she gotten in her bed?

Hermione looked around her, her terror eclipsed by her confusion.

There was a mess of papers all over her bed, files piled on the wooden floor and the chair pushed against the small desk on the opposite wall.

Everything was the way it had been before she had left to work that morning. Except now, when she blinked and looked more closely, there were new files.

When had she gotten  _ home _ ?

She glanced down at herself, her blouse was slicked against her and her skirt had ridden up along her hips. Her brows furrowed with distaste, noticing the smear of food stains along the white.

She had to have come home at some unnamed hour and passed out on the bed. It was the only explanation she could think of, short of assuming she somehow teleported to her bedroom.

But, Hermione’s lips puckered in thought, hadn’t she been in her office? Hadn’t she been working on some files until late in the evening for some important hearing?

_ Hadn’t you just faced off a nameless creature that stalked you while at work? A creature that seemed to know you better than you knew yourself? A monster that waited for you to lower your guard before it caught you in its web? _

Red eyes flashed along her mind’s eye.

Confusion gave way to noxious fear, and Hermione struggled to keep her breaths even at the phantom memory of its mouth on her neck.

It had been so real. She could have sworn its mouth had touched her bare skin. Hot and wet, a tongue lapping at the flesh with sharp teeth hidden behind thin lips.

_ Had it all been a dream? _


	3. Smoke & Mirrors

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This has come a little late, but here you are! I apologize for that. I was planning to post it all in one go today but life in the outside world took a bit more precedent. 
> 
> Thank you for your patience! I hope you enjoy this chapter.
> 
> Leave a comment if you did :)

“Are you okay?”

Hermione paused, her head tilting to the side as she balanced her cellphone on her shoulder. She’d been dreading the question since she’d received his call. The last thing she wanted was to talk to Harry, especially when she’d dropped off the face of the earth.

Her job and the horrifying notion that she was _seeing_ things did that to a person.

“I’m fine, Harry. I’ve just been busy. My job is sucking the life out of me.” Hermione did her best to keep her exhaustion from her voice. She hadn’t slept that previous night. The nightmares were coming more often now, trickling into her waking moments when her eyes glazed over and slumber called for it.

It made work harder than it was already. She’d had to continue several hearings and file extensions for others in order to sort through the paperwork. Something her supervisors, to both her chagrin and surprise, had taken notice of.

Apparently, when the new associate wasn’t picking up after their slack, it was only a matter of time before their cozy and stress-free lives took note of that. It meant more work for them, after all.

“You don’t sound okay.” Harry replied, the suspicious note of his voice making her cringe. It was the last thing she needed. “You’ve been avoiding my calls. You’ve deleted your social media accounts and you didn’t greet me as you usually would when I call.”

Licking her lips, Hermione considered hanging up in that moment. She knew that tone. He wasn’t upset, but he certainly wasn’t going to be cooperative. He was a tenacious one, and when he suspected something was amiss, there was little he wouldn’t do to get to the bottom of it. It was both an admirable and annoying quality. She hadn’t minded it much back when she had been in England, but now, in America, it was a bit overbearing.

Though, she wondered if that was merely because she was losing her mind and there was little she could do to stop it or more because she didn’t want to concern him with her own problems. That was difficult to tell at this point—

“Hermione? Are you still there?”

Hermione pinched the bridge of her nose, settling more comfortably on her beat up couch. The room was an utter mess, a testament to how hard she’d been pushing herself these past few weeks. She’d never been one for letting things fall to ruin in this way, to let the dishes pile in her sink and for her files to litter her entire flat. It was unlike her.

“Yeah, I’m still here. Just, look Harry, it’s been a rough few days. You know how much work my job is and it doesn’t get any easier.”

There was a brief moment of silence on the other end. Hermione braced herself. She knew what was coming. It always came to this whenever he called, whenever she even gave him an inkling that she was unhappy about some innocuous thing in her life.

“You can always come back. No one would think less of you if you did. You could get licensed here in England or specialize in international stuff. I know England and America are always doing business.”

It was a sound idea, but she didn’t want to do international law. Her heart wasn’t in it. Business and international transactional work were not for her. It had never been. She wanted to be in court. To make a difference in the lives of the disenfranchised and the poor. It was why she was working as much as she could to pay off her debts.

She wanted the experience and then establish her own practice. A criminal defense firm was what she dreamed of, where she knew her heart lied. She wanted to bring justice to those caught in the gears of society and to protect those that did not deserve the hand they’d been dealt. None of which an international law firm could  _ever_ provide.

“I know, Harry.”

Returning back to England would not do that. She’d be caught in the vicious cycle she’d left in the first place.

_Like an empty house that harbored precious childhood memories. Forgotten and lost to the sands of time, stripped of all joy when its inhabitants disappeared one by one._

There was nothing for her in England. Harry and Ron would be hurt if they knew what she thought, if they were to somehow divine this fact from her head. But she didn’t want to go back. She loved them, but her parents were _gone_.

Her mother and father had disappeared. The system had failed to uncover their whereabouts after all these years. She couldn’t stomach living in a place that had _failed_ her parents. No, not again.

She needed to start anew. She needed to fill the hole with the rewarding feeling of public service. If that meant leaving her home country, then even better.

“—but you’re not coming back.” Harry interrupted her before she could speak. “I get it, you know.”

Hermione froze, surprise rendering her speechless.

“I know why you can’t come back. I know why you rarely call, and I know that things can never return to the way they were.”

Tears pricked her eyes, but she didn’t let them fall. She didn’t dare sniff, to wipe her eyes lest she crumble at that moment. She wasn’t weak. No. She would get through this as she had once before.

She could ignore these nightmares. This grief and pressure, she could manage it. She’d done so for the past year without issue. She’d subjected herself to worse before her parents disappeared without a single trace.

There wasn’t anything Hermione Jean Granger couldn’t do.

_Then why does it feel like you’re ready to fall apart? Why do you waver? Why do you wish you could remove the weight twined around your shoulder blades?_

Swallowing, Hermione sucked in a deep breath to stop herself from snapping.

She hated how Harry always made her feel this way. It was always him. He just knew what to say.

“But if you ever need me, promise me that you’ll call. You can always talk to me or Ron. You mean the world to us.”

It took her longer than she liked to answer. There was something lodged in her throat. It sat heavy and thick in her windpipe, like a scream waiting to be released.

_Compose yourself. Don’t break, don’t break._

“Of course, Harry. You know I will.”

* * *

 

“Don’t you miss him?”

A voice murmured into her ear, familiar and haunting.

Hermione clenched her eyes shut, her body leaning heavily against the cold tile of her shower.

The water was spraying against her back, the vibrations doing little to soothe the panic wound around her throat.

_It’s not real. It’s not real. It’s not—_

“You seem close. Perhaps he’s your lover...a boy you had to abandon before you sought out—”

“Shut up, we’re not like that.” Hermione hissed, aware that there was no one truly there. It was all in her head. The voice was not real. The shadows and the phantom press of its lips against her ear were nothing. Had always been nothing.

It was her overactive imagination. It was her exhaustion. The stress and the abuses at her job were stretching her thin, like a rubberband pulled taut until it snapped.

“That will not spare him.”

Hermione did not move nor answer. It was a waste of energy. There was nothing she could say to make it stop, to make it leave her be.

Sleep only made it stronger, only made it appear before her and scare her out of her wit’s end. Work only made it more demanding of her attentions, made her want to tear out the hair from her scalp. Its words bled into her work journal when she took down notes, even when she didn’t wish the words to translate.

The screen of her computer would even flash red and white. Her body frozen stiff, helpless and unable to move as its long, billowy cloak dragged on the ground, too close for comfort.

She saw it when her eyes skirted too quickly around a room. She heard it when it when she closed her eyes and dozed off. She felt it when she was caught between waking and dreaming, its fingers sliding along her throat before that same hand lowered to the wide collar of her nightshirt.  

It always appeared when she slept, caught in a fitful nightmare with no certainty if she was asleep or simply hallucinating.

“Nothing can.”

Hermione shivered when the hot water finally went cold, as if the curious note in the creature’s voice was enough to will away the comfort of her own bath.

_It’s all in your head. You’re dreaming right now, you’re asleep right now, just as you always are._

“Does that notion frighten you, my dear?”

Hermione bit her lip until it hurt, until her tongue drowned in red and iron.

“Do _I_ frighten you?”

Lips pressed against her ear, an arctic wind settling over her spine. It drained her of her warmth, left her with nothing but the chill its words only could evoke in her.

“ _Good—”_

Hermione’s vision swam, the constant flow of water along her back dissipating into nothing. It was as if she’d been stripped bare. Unmade in that moment. She was only consciousness, only a mind wading through the nebulous unknown.

“— _Remember this fear, Hermione.”_

* * *

She made an appointment with a psychiatrist when she’d woken up in her bathroom floor for the seventh time that month.

The receptionist on the other end had been helpful. Kinder than Hermione had expected from a healthcare worker in the United States. She’d heard horror stories of the atrocious service, of how mental health physicians ignored the needs of their patients in lieu of monetary compensation. But it seemed that even in the cogs of society, there were medical works willing to provide a helping hand.

She’d been to primary care physicians in the past, but never before had she considered seeking out professional help for her own mental health. She’d never thought it necessary.

Hermione Granger did not do mental illness.

And yet—

Here she was, standing on the precipice of a mental breakdown as she waited for the days to trickle by.

She’d turned in her last memorandum of law the previous day, her mouth like ash when she asked that she be given unpaid sick leave for the next month after handing in the worst memorandum yet. It couldn’t be helped, but it didn’t stop her from feeling guilty.

No work meant no pro bono. It meant sending the cases to another capable attorney to handle after she’d withdrawn from representation.

It _sucked_ , but there was little she could do now. She was nothing more than dead weight. Utterly useless not only to herself but also to the clients that relied on her for legal representation. She needed to get help, to do something before she shattered.

_Before you commit malpractice and lose your license._

“Hermione Granger?” A tentative voice called, and Hermione perked at that.

She rose from her seat in the cold waiting room, body sluggish when she took a firmer hold of her bag and headed over to the nurse several feet away.

The nurse was dressed entirely in scrubs, pale green and bright. Her hair was piled atop her head, brown ringlets curled around her forehead. It was stylish and youthful. A sharp contrast to the dark circles rimmed around the girl’s eyes and her sallow skin.

It was like looking in a mirror. A distorted, cracked version of Hermione. Haunted and gaunt, just as Hermione had looked before turning away from her own bathroom mirror that morning.

Hermione gave the nurse a strained smile before cutting past the open doorway and into the clinic.

Everything was painted in pastel colors. Pinks and blues lined the walls, the white of the machines melding nicely with the decor.

It was...sterile. Unsettling in the way it shouldn’t have been considering the clinic was supposed to elicit positive emotion rather than distress. She supposed it had something to do with her not wanting to be there.

“The doctor will be with you in a moment. Please have a seat inside, and I will take your vitals while you wait.” The nurse said before pointing to the first door to her left.

“Thanks.” Hermione replied, heading in the direction the nurse indicated without hesitation.

It was a small room. There was a flat medical bed pressed to Hermione’s right-hand side, a computer monitor and desk on the other end. It was filled with different hospital equipment. Syringes, gauze, gloves, and other common items Hermione associated with hospitals.

It was...like any typical room, though there was an air of listlessness to it that did little to calm her.

Hermione sat on the bed, and the nurse quickly went to her and did as she must. She took Hermione’s blood pressure, and then, checked her weight. Standard things that Hermione allowed without protest.

The nurse left quickly after that, leaving Hermione without a word of comfort as she shut the door behind her.

Then, almost seconds after her departure, the most handsome man Hermione had ever seen in her life slipped inside after briefly knocking.

Her breath caught in her throat. Surprise colored her cheeks a bright pink, taking in the doctor with great curiosity.

The doctor was not what she was expecting. She’d searched for the best psychiatrist she could afford, accepting the online reviews and the comments from her research as sufficient evidence of his skill. As strange as it was, she'd always assumed that specialists would be much  _older_ , it had been a misconception even she had not been able to curb throughout her academic and personal life. Of course, it wasn't  _unreasonable_ for the most well-renowned psychiatrist in the city to be an older medical doctor, but still, considering her own accolades she should have known that Dr. Riddle could be almost her own age. 

“Miss Granger. How are you feeling?”

Hermione was snapped out of her trance at the dulcet ring of his voice, struck dumb by the brilliant gleam of his dark eyes and perfectly coiffed hair. 

“I-I’m not sure, honestly.” Hermione replied, struggling to keep the burn of embarrassment from her cheeks when he smiled reassuringly and pulled the only chair in the room closer and sat directly in front of her.

“Well, that’s what we’re here to determine. Please, get comfortable. You look as if you’re ready to bolt straight out of my office.”

Hermione’s flush deepened before she took the man’s advice, shuffling nervously on the bed before going still.

“Better?”

“Better.” Tom praised before settling his impenetrable gaze on her. It stripped her bare in moments. Like the man had taken a fine magnifying glass and had turned it on her.

“Now then, Miss Granger. What seems to be the problem? My assistant indicated that you’d been having trouble sleeping?”

Hermione clasped her hands together on her lap for a moment, gaze slipping past his intense eyes to stare at his forehead. She didn’t know why it unsettled her, why it made her skin crawl to be at the end of his assessment. Not even the harshest judge could render her this...helpless and lost. The nightmares had to be the cause of such a strange reaction.

“I’ve been...seeing things. These awful things that never seem to go away. It’s become hard to tell when I’m awake or asleep because they just feel so _real_.”

Dr. Riddle shifted on his chair, a hand slipping underneath his chin in thought.

“Nightmares, you say? How so? Describe precisely what it is that you’re experiencing.”

Hermione sucked in a deep breath, suddenly hesitant. Something told her to stop speaking, to just get up and leave. Hermione ignored it.

“When I go to sleep, I dream of this monster chasing me. It follows me, _talks_ , to me. Almost as if it knows who I am, as if I am some interesting puzzle it wants to solve.”

Hermione stopped.

Dr. Riddle waited until Hermione finally gathered the resolve to continue. She sucked in a nervous breath and then continued from where she’d left off.

“I usually can’t move in them. Like my body is frozen stiff as it talks and _talks_ , its fingers touching me—”

Hermione shut her eyes, fear blooming low in her belly at the mere mention of that shadowy presence.

“It tells me that it wants to kill all my friends. That there’s something _worse_ out there, waiting for me.”

Papers shuffled as she spoke, but it went unnoticed. It didn’t stop her from speaking now that she’d been given the chance to let it out.

_To cleanse yourself of all the terrible monstrosities sitting at the bottom of your stomach._

“It follows me to work, lingers in the back of my head when I am falling asleep. It doesn’t matter whether I am in bed or simply dozing off at work. It’s always there. Waiting. Always _fucking—”_

Hermione clenched her hands into fists, ignoring the soft breaths escaping the man’s lips.

“I don’t know what this is. I’ve been trying my best to ignore it, to keep moving forward as if it isn’t there with me. But I _can’t_ do this anymore. I didn’t want to admit that I need help, but I am losing my mind, doctor.”

Hermione opened her eyes and leveled the man with a pleading stare. She needed this all to stop. God, it was terrible. All of it. She couldn’t live with the phantom presence following her like a shadow. A twisted guardian angel that did all within its power to torture her at every turn.

Dr. Riddle’s expression was inscrutable. There was a strange gleam in his eye, a curve to his lip that hadn’t been there before.

It made her insides turn, flip and twist in a single succession.

“It seems, Miss Granger, that you have a terrible condition we call sleep paralysis.”

Hermione could hardly believe her ears. She’d heard vague mentions of the illness, had read a few horror stories even, but she never anticipated that she would ever have it. It was a rare condition. She'd done some of the research herself and had immediately dismissed it after the symptoms failed to mirror each of her own symptoms. She wouldn't pretend to argue with the doctor on this fact, as educated as she was, she wasn't the one with the medical degree nor the recommendations.

“Fortunately, it is perfectly treatable.”

Hermione released a deep breath she hadn’t been aware she was holding.

_Thank god._

“There’s no need for you to worry.” Dr. Riddle said, slowly rising from his seat and flashing her a warm smile that melted what little distress lingered in the back of her mind.

“You’re in good hands.”


	4. The Void

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things start to pick up.
> 
> Mind the typos, I don't have a beta for this story.
> 
> And Leave me a comment if you enjoyed!

All of her reservations had been for naught. Dr. Riddle was perfectly equipped to help her with her problem.

Since she’d started attending their weekly sessions, the nightmares had slowed in their frequency. There were still moments where she was certain she was caught in one of her fits, the stiffness of her muscles and the flash of color in the darkness too difficult to ignore, but they had become infrequent.

The creature had grown silent in her head. She no longer felt as if at any moment’s notice she was going to faint, sink into some dreamlike state where nothing short of her own screams could wrench her from the night terrors. It certainly helped that she wasn’t working anymore, forced into house arrest by the doctor when she’d informed him of just how little time she’d spent caring for herself.

The man had practically balked when she listed with specificity the amount of work she handled each day, his expression hardening into a chiding look that made her flush with guilt. When he’d asked her when she actually slept, it was possibly the most uncomfortable few seconds of her life.

Telling him that she managed perhaps four hours, maybe five if she wanted to sleep in, had _not_ gone well.

It was good on her part to take off the month, otherwise, her doctor might have thrown a fit.

But there were some drawbacks to her decisions. The fact that she couldn’t _work_ was as much a blessing as it was a curse. It left her with too much free time on her hands. Her mind, even though it had been blessedly free of that horrifying presence, still wandered in directions she did not wish for it to go.

Thinking about the creature’s appearance, for one, was not something she should actively be thinking about. Or perhaps, the almost unconscious way her mind traveled back to the handsome, dimpled face of her doctor when she laid in bed.

Thinking about the monster made her ill, but daydreaming about the doctor...that was unacceptable. She was a patient, and she understood the importance of maintaining a strict line between oneself and their clients. She had had one too many experiences with male clients and their unwanted advances.

It was a _bar sanction_ to date a client. And even if it didn’t lead to legal trouble with the bar association, everyone and their mum knew just how terrible of an idea that was. One simply did not date their client. Period.

The same applied to doctors and their patients. Doctors must abide by the same creed as legal professionals did. And Hermione’s damned mind was mucking that up. She blamed the loneliness and the long year of sexual repression. What other reason could there be for her to feel such things for her  _doctor?_

Hermione glowered at the telly in front of her, no longer watching the documentary she’d been interested in thirty minutes earlier. She couldn’t concentrate on it. Sitting around on her arse had never been her thing. The fact that the show was medical in nature, reminding her of her psychiatrist, certainly did not help matters.

Sighing, Hermione grabbed the remote lying beside her on the couch and shut off the screen. She turned her attention to the clock above the television set, anticipation blooming low in her stomach when the familiar red announced the time.

_9:59 P.M._

It wasn’t late by any means. When she had still been working at the firm, she’d been sleeping much later. Midnight was the earliest on a good day. However, the fact that Dr. Riddle had suggested she go to bed, at the latest, by 10 o'clock every night, had made this debatable hour her official time of rest. She hadn’t been thrilled—still wasn’t in many respects since the _best_ documentaries often were after 10—but he had been resolute. He refused to budge on this, insisting that she get her much needed rest.

It had pissed her off at first, she had planned to fight him on this point _vigorously_ , in fact. However, the low warning he had given her about the nightmares _returning_ had extinguished that fury before it had gotten her into a verbal match with the man. Dr. Riddle may not have been willing to bend, but she had to trust that he was doing this for her benefit. Her nightmares would not be cured if she refused to listen to his advice. It was the whole reason she had been there in the first place.

The instructions that followed were easier to accept after that conversation.

She needed to take her medication by 10 and no later. His tone had been final when he’d mentioned that fact. His warning that she’d be drowning in nightmares once again if she failed to listen almost coercive, now that she thought more on that point. The threat honestly hadn't been necessary. She didn’t need to be frightened out of her wits to comply with his instructions. Even if they were odd since 10 p.m. _was_ a rather arbitrary hour, but still. She had taken his demands in stride.

After all, she was a _lawyer_ , not a doctor. She had to assume he had a good reason for choosing that hour. Even if it had sounded stupid then, and still sounded rather ludicrous now.

Hermione rose from the couch, tightening her night robe to ward off the chill in her apartment, and headed for her bedroom at the opposite end of the living room. It was a short walk, one that she had quickly grown accustomed to now that she had time to actually _enjoy_ her apartment. She had only been living in it for about three months, and this was the first time she’d had time to acquaint herself with the space since moving.

She opened the door and immediately hit the switch to the right of the door, anxiety spiking through her veins. Even now, her bedroom made her nervous. The nightmares had slowed, but that did not mean that she was comfortable delving into her room in total darkness.

Not without making sure there wasn’t something there waiting for her. She couldn’t help it. Truly. Months of hearing voices and seeing faces in the dark could do that to a person.

Fortunately, the hesitation was less severe now. How she had been during the first two weeks of treatment was dramatically different from now. She’d shown great improvement.

Before, she had refused to walk into her bedroom without her phone in hand to light her path. Clutching the pills in her other hand, unable to part with it should she accidentally doze off and forget to take her dose, terrified of what might happen should she fuck up.

Now, she trusted herself more. She trusted her doctor and knew she was in capable hands.

Hermione kicked her bedroom door closed behind her, beelining for her nightstand to grab at her medicine case.

_Alright, you just have to take your dose for the day and then get to bed. Just as the doctor ordered._

With a few short steps, she stopped by her nightstand and grabbed the only bottle sitting on its surface. It was about the size of her palm with a child-proof cap.

Her lips puckered into a frown when she lifted and tried to open the bottle, but it refused to open after two pitiful attempts. It was child-proof, but in Hermione’s humble opinion, it was also _adult_ proof as well. The damned thing was hard to open!

She didn’t know how long she struggled with the thing before she got it open, but after what felt like an eternity, Hermione shot a glance at the clock and nearly squeaked out in shock.  

_15 minutes? I took nearly 15 minutes to open a bloody bottle?_

Hermione didn’t bother heading into her small bathroom to take the pill with water. She gulped it down dry, grimacing at the bitter and uncomfortable feeling in her throat.

The back of her tongue tasted of iron, and Hermione hoped it wouldn’t linger for the rest of the evening. It was one of the few things she hated about pills, aside from the ease with which doctor’s prescribed them. America was leading the world with its high rates of drug addiction, and Hermione knew all too well just how many poor addicts were caught in that web themselves. They were the ones trapped between the gears of the criminal justice system. The state, often, criminalizing the addict rather than giving them the treatment they truly deserved. Few would agree with her on this point back at the firm, but that hardly mattered to her.

And now, here she was, taking some unpronounceable drug herself to treat an ailment that was not precisely _curable_ , but was easily managed with a healthy sleep schedule and frequent trips to the doctor’s office for observation.

Who would have guessed? Certainly not her.

Hermione blinked, a soft sound of surprise escaping her throat when the clock read _10:45 P.M._

Dr. Riddle would kill her if he found out she’d been cheating.

_That should be the least of your concerns, Hermione. What if you trigger your night terrors again?_

Unease blossomed low in her belly, the memory of the last nightmare many nights ago still pervasive in her mind. The voice had been terrible. Its presence lapping at her sanity, bleeding between the folds of her brain like a poison.

 _No,_ _never again._

With that thought, Hermione quickly rushed back to the light switch to shut off the bright incandescent light in her bedroom, plummeting the room in thick darkness. She then preceded to crawl into bed, as she should have 45 minutes ago, swallowing back her anxiety.

But there was no helping it. Her heart was racing a mile a minute, Dr. Riddle’s severe face flashing before her eyes.

_“You must take your medication precisely at 10:00 o’clock. Not a moment after. I cannot guarantee that you will safeguard your mind from the nightmares if you forget a dose. It is highly experimental what I have prescribed, and it is only by your knowing consent that I have given you this at all.”_

_Hermione nodded her head, tongue peeking out to lick her cracked lips._

_“Of course. I completely understand. I’m a professional. I’m aware of the importance of consent.”_

_Dr. Riddle tilted his head for a moment, regarding her closely with his sharp and intense black eyes. It made her want to fidget, but she held strong. This was her_ doctor _, she had to trust him._

_“Very well. Be certain to be in bed by that time as well. You do not want to take this medication and remain conscious after it takes effect. Is that understood?”_

_A shudder crawled up her spine at the severity of his tone._

_There was a question burning in the back of her head. Her curiosity was a monstrous thing, but at that moment, not even her infamous need to know_ more _could overcome the sudden unease that swept over her._

_So instead of asking why, as she should have, instead she said:_

_“I understand, Dr. Riddle.”_

Hermione swallowed, hoping and _praying_ that she hadn’t made a huge mistake in disobeying his precise order. Even if it had been by accident. The grim expression on his face had not been comforting in the least, even knowing that she signed up for an experimental treatment.

She shut her eyes, the familiar tug of sleep yanking at her strings, pulling her nearer and nearer to pleasant nothingness. A place where there were only her own thoughts. Nebulous and soothing in a way that the outside world was not.

There, no one knew who Hermione Jean Granger was. There were no starving homeless men and women begging for sustenance. There were no innocent men and women jailed for crimes they did not commit. Children that were forced to act in despicable ways by virtue of where they were raised.

Her mind slowly began to drift away, sinking and melting into the darkness. The fear and the unease of missing her dose by a few scant minutes now forgotten. In that moment, it was only Hermione and the quiet laughter that slowly began to echo in the back of her mind.

A familiar sound...one that she must have heard once before—

Then, there was nothing.

* * *

_Hermione._

Her name echoed through the nothingness. Like droplets in a placid lake, the soundwaves were carried off through the abyss.

Then, there was laughter. Airy and light. The tenor familiar...tugging at some part of her memory that she could not place.

Where had she heard it before? Where was she now?

The laughter grew louder, and her ears began to _ring_ with it. The sound swallowed her whole, it pulsed in time with the beating of her heart. It trailed along her sweat-slicked skin, following an unseen path that Hermione could not see.

_Hermione._

Another voice called to her, cutting between the laughter. It was the same pitch, the same unmistakable voice crooning for her from somewhere in the void.

Her eyes slowly opened, compelled to uncover the source of that haunting laugh, but there was only blackness. Only shadows where she should have found the familiar blinking lights of her bedside clock and her internet router.

_Hermione._

Her lips parted to speak, to respond to that mesmeric voice, but her vocal chords refused to comply. It was as if something had lodged itself in her throat, caught somewhere between her voice box and trachea.

Had she eaten something thick and sweet before bed? Could she be coming down with a cold?

Swallowing, Hermione tried again, but still, no sound would come. A breath of air was all she could manage. Something wasn’t right.

_Hermioneee._

She tried to move, but her body refused. Frustration quickly overtook the sluggishness clouding her senses. The first glimmer of awakening after an evening with no moon to be found.

Her senses sharpened. Foreboding rolled into existence, a visceral response to awakening in someplace unknown. How she had missed this, forgotten this when it was so _obvious—_

_Can you hear me, Hermione?_

The voice asked, quickly interrupting her thoughts. There was something curious and—to her befuddlement—hopeful in its voice. Hermione tried to shift her body to acknowledge that she’d heard, but still, she was frozen. It was a pitiful attempt to shake off the strange weight, but she had to _try_. She was suspended in some unknown world. In a place darker than the shadows that had followed her every waking hour, that lurked in the world between a mindless daydream and reality. It would be absurd if she remained floating in the nothing as if something wasn't clearly wrong.

_Hermione._

A terrible weight pressed over her chest, as if someone had placed an open palm right at the center, and began to push  _down_ and _down_ against it. Her bones creaked like the wooden beams of an old home, the pressure indescribable, but thankfully not painful. It was only uncomfortable. Nothing like the pain of living. Here, it was as if pain did not exist, the negative emotion banished from this plane. 

It was strange. A sensation she couldn't quite put her finger on. Its presence like a collar winding uncomfortably around her neck. This  _awareness_ of a pressure, but the lack of  _feeling_ behind it.

What was happening? Where was she?

_Hermione._

Ice rushed through her veins when that pressure began to spread through her, anxiety building the longer she remained in this suspended state of consciousness. Unsure if she was asleep or awake, caught in the cogs of this machine she desperately wanted to be free of. At that point, she found that it didn't matter that she couldn't tell reality from fiction. The logistics were of no consequence when one was being metaphorically cooked alive.

Somehow, she had been transported into a brand new world, forced on some terrible ride at the local amusement park with no way to get out. Familiar, somehow, even though she had no _bloody_ idea how she’d gotten here.

_But you know this place, don’t you?_

From where? She had to know it to be struck by such an impression, had to have been to this plane once before to recognize it. She _had_ to.

But what if this place _wasn’t_ real, in the way most persons conceived it? What if this was some corner in her own head, wedged between the folds of her brain and the blood vessels carrying oxygen to and away from her mind? A dream world she had made up, a world that could only exist within a nightm—

Nausea wrenched her innards, and Hermione gagged.

_Can you feel me?_

She didn’t know what she was supposed to feel. Who was this person? Was this even a person to begin with?

Hermione didn’t know. She _didn’t bloody know_.

Hermione fought against the oppressive weight, but she might as well have been trying to move a boulder. She was powerless. A glacier caught between land and the desperate cries of the Arctic ocean on the opposite side. Frightening though it was, Hermione could not be bothered to feel terrified. There was no time for horror. She needed to  _think_ , to be cognizant of her surroundings. She couldn't _afford_ to be distressed, she needed to get out before something _terrible_ happe—

_Hermione…_

Heat flared up her center, sharp and unlike the sweet haze that had engulfed her earlier. A gasp tore from her mouth, the first echo of sound since she’d awakened in the nothing.

It spread through her like a wildfire, eating her alive. It teased at her senses, chased after the pressure digging into her ribcage insistently.

_Poor poor, Hermione._

The voice became distorted. It no longer sounded comforting. No longer the voice of a friend she’d completely forgotten about. The slow and even drawl was almost...mocking.

Something tugged at her once again. A memory. Hermione reached for it with her mind, propelled by some unknown force. Curiosity or perhaps unease, Hermione could not be certain. None of this was making sense. _She_ wasn’t making sense.

The memory slipped away from her before her fingers grazed its edges. Frustration swept through her, but it did nothing to distract her from the heat and the pressure burrowed deep in her chest. The twin sensations monopolized her, nearly tearing her in two.

What could it be?

_Looking for help...asking so many questions..._

What? What did the voice mean? Hermione wanted to ask, but couldn't, throat tight. Had she been looking for help? Had she been asking questions? Could the voice hear her thoughts, did it _know_ just how badly she wanted to understand what was happening?

A dull throb flared to life at the center of her forehead, pulsing in time to the beat of her heart.

_Now, you’ll have your answer._

The world around her shattered like glass, and Hermione screamed, caught off guard.

Indescribable pain suddenly consumed her. Her eyes clenched shut, a slipping between her parted lips.

It was chaos. All, at that moment, had become pain. Her nails, _god_ , they were like acid rain pelting against unmoving stone, eroded away by the sulphuric liquid. Her skin had become noxious gas, her heart bitter arsenic that poisoned all that dared to swallow it up.

It was _agony._

Hermione writhed, tears streaming down her cheeks, eyes staring unseeingly into the nothing until—

The black exploded into a kaleidoscope of color. The fog, the pressure, the heat, and the paralysis broke apart. Her body crumpled onto something soft and familiar, but it did nothing to quell the fire coursing through her veins. The pain twisted inside her, writhing around her intestines like a swarm of eels.

Back arching, Hermione convulsed on the soft surface. Her throat burned with her screams, vocal chords straining when the agony refused to abate, insisting on hurting her _more_.

 _God, please, make it stop_ , Hermione begged.

She was going to lose her mind if this didn’t stop. She wanted it to stop. _God_ , it was terrible. Unlike anything she’d ever experienced in her life. She remembered slicing her thumb by her sink several weeks before, the sharp sting of the blade and the familiar trickle of blood sliding down her palm. But that pain was nothing. It could not compare to this.

One cut compared to millions of tiny fissures being sliced into her flesh was _nothing._

_Please. Please. Please—_

Abruptly, everything stopped.

Hermione immediately slumped against the soft sheets beneath her, the scent of her laundry detergent and sweat making her head spin. A soft shuddering wheeze fled her mouth, and it took everything within her to stop from sobbing.

“ _Shhh_.”

A scream wanted to climb out of her throat, horror, and panic making her quiver violently over the soft surface when an all too familiar voice spoke inches from her ear.

_No. No. No. No._

She’d been certain she’d gotten rid of him. She’d been dutiful with her treatment. Listened and followed Dr. Riddle’s instructions even when she didn’t _want_ to. The nightmares had been blissfully absent. Just as Dr. Riddle had promised, and now…

God, _why_ had she taken so long to take her medicine?

Hermione clenched her eyes tightly, unwilling to open them and confirm her truest fear.

_“You’ll wake him.”_

It was the same dream. The _same_ exact dream she had the first time the nightmares had taken a turn for the worst.

Hermione’s stomach heaved, but nothing came up. There was nothing save the burn of her stomach acid in her throat.

_“He’s here. Waiting.”_

Hermione bit her tongue hard enough to bleed, unwilling to speak and give this monster power. This wasn’t real. None of it was. This was another one of her nightmares, and if she just pretended that it—

_“Waiting for you to sleep. Waiting for you to see.”_

She wouldn’t ask this time. No. she’d hold perfectly still, inevitably wake up and then—

A cold hand settled upon her chest, chilling her to the marrow of her bones. Long nails scratched at her nightdress, the texture enough to make her bite her lip and squirm on her bed.

Hermione stilled, a harrowing realization cutting through her senses.

She could  _move_. For the first time since the nightmares had started, she could _move._

_Why?_

“Ah, so you’ve finally noticed.”

Swallowing, Hermione found the courage to open her eyes. She was terrified out of her wits, but this was different. The amused note in its voice, the sudden ability to move when she had always been constrained to her bed, was all too much of an anomaly for her to ignore.

Even knowing that the monster was there, looming above her, did not prepare her for the sight. The monster was close, closer than was sensible. Its pale skin almost incandescent in the dark. Its bright eyes were focused entirely on her own face, taking its fill of her. It took everything within her not to press back against her bed, unsettled by its nearness.

“...Noticed what?” She hedged, her voice thick with dread.

The monster tilted its head to one side, blinking at her before its mouth spread into a slow, knowing smile. Hermione tried not to shudder when she caught sight of its sharp teeth. Recalling, in that instance, the stench of blood and earth that had emanated from its mouth the last time it’d leaned into her. She could never forget it.

“You’ve always been free.”

Hermione’s brow furrowed, confusion eclipsing her terror in that second. _What?_

“Free to roam between the nothing and the everything.”

She didn’t understand. None of this was making sense. The creature was speaking in riddles.

“You’re not making any sense—”

 _“Shhh.”_ The creature hissed again, leaning in closer and halting any other questions she might have asked.

Its eyes were boring into her own, as if it were trying to divine the secrets of the universe from within her eyes. She’d never felt more exposed in her life. Not even Dr. Riddle’s probing stare many moons ago could compare.

“The truth is right in front of you.”

Its hand suddenly dug into her chest, nails cutting through her dress and slicing into skin. Hermione did not flinch, biting her cheek to stop herself from shying away when the creature’s eyes focused on her chest, greedily taking in the way her blood saturated the fabric of her nightdress.

“It waits for you to pluck it from its branch.”

The creature licked its horrific teeth, drool pooling from the corners of its mouth and spilling atop her dress. Her nose wrinkled with disgust, mouth twisting into a grimace, unable to mask the gesture when its breath reeked of death and blood.

_“Just as he waits. Just as he shall inevitably pluck you from your reality—"_

Hermione's face went white when it leaned in, touching its disgusting mouth against her ear.

 _"—One petal at a time._ ”


	5. A Gilded Masquerade

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ...Well, what do you know? An update.
> 
> I apologize for how long this took. Apparently, life decided that it wanted to tear me away from my writing for a bit. 
> 
> Here you have it folks. We are nearing the end. I apologize for any possible errors or typos. I have no beta-reader, and I hate editing sometimes.
> 
> Please leave me a comment if you enjoy the story.

Hermione shot up with a gasp, her brow slick with sweat and her heart racing a mile a minute. Her hand immediately pressed over her chest, where the monster’s fingers had cut into her skin. 

Her nightdress was damp and clinging to her chest, but the touch did not lead to pain. Hermione released a deep sigh she didn’t know she was holding and forced her other hand to reach over to the nightstand on her right. 

A tremor wracked through her, the nakedness of extending her arm out in her bedroom when she couldn’t see inches in front of her, terrifying. Because how did she know that the creature was truly gone? How did she know that she was actually awake as opposed to asleep? 

Her nightmares were confusing. Often, reality bled into the fictional and it wouldn’t be surprising if this was merely another layer of her sleep disorder. Dr. Riddle had warned her about that when she’d visited the last time and mentioned the progress she’d been making.

When her fingers felt the familiar scuffed corners of her phone, she yanked her phone and arm back into the bed. 

She waited a moment for her heart to settle, listening for the slithering sound of the creature, before she powered her phone on and hit Dr. Riddle’s number. He had been kind enough to provide her with his cellphone number in the event that something happened outside of business hours. At first, she’d been adamant about saving it on her phone, but at this moment, none of that mattered.

To hell with doctor and patient relationships, she needed  _ help. _

_ Before the creature awoke...before she fell  _ asleep.

Her phone rang for a minute, and just as she was certain it would cut off and lead her straight to voicemail, his voice came to life on the receiver. Hermione had never felt more relieved than in that moment, slumping against the bed, unconscious of the fact that she’d been tense.

“Hello, this is Riddle.”

He didn’t sound sleepy at all, even when the blinking lights on her phone announced in bright letters that it was 3 in the morning.

“Hello?”

Hermione cursed under her breath and pressed the phone to her ear, swallowing her anxieties and sudden shyness. There was no time to get cold feet now. He had her number. The deed was done.

“Hello, Dr. Riddle. It’s Hermione Granger—”

“Hermione?” He cut her off before she could start rambling. Her fingers refused to still, shaking violently with her nerves. She was hesitant to speak; she honestly hadn’t expected him to answer. 

“What’s wrong? Did something happen?” Concern was thick in the man’s tone, and Hermione sucked in a loud breath before finding the courage to say what she needed to. Telling him that she had taken her medication late and gone to bed later than he’d prescribed would get her a lecture, but she knew he would be unable to help her if she lied.

Her mental health wasn’t something she was willing to sacrifice for the sake of her pride. She’d already lost most of her dignity by working at a terrible job, what was another ding in her armor?

“I..I’m sorry, doctor. I just had an episode. I took the experimental medication later than usual and didn’t get to bed till half an hour after that— _ god _ , it was awful” Hermione rushed, her fingers twining around her sheets at the mere  _ memory  _ of the nightmare.

_ Just as he shall pluck you from your world. One petal at a time.  _

Hermione shuddered, trying not to be sick all over her mattress.

“I-it was just like the first nightmare. Identical. But then it  _ wasn’t _ . It turned into something else, into something terrible and now I don’t know if this is even  _ real—” _

“Hermione, please slow down.” Tom interrupted. “I did not understand a single word you’ve said. The line cut off and all I could make out was static.”

A chill swept through her, her eyes darting away from where they’d been gazing into her lap in the bed and up to the doorway where the creature had once come through. There was nothing there, but  _ static?  _ She always had excellent signal in her bedroom. She paid a pretty penny to make sure that her caller quality was excellent in the event she had to speak to clients from home. 

Something wasn’t right. 

“Dr. Riddle, can you hear me now?” Hermione said again, fingers clenching into tight fists when the line grew silent. Not even the doctor’s breaths could be heard through the receiver. Hermione counted the seconds in the back of her head, silently pleading for him to answer her. 

_ God, please, please, please— _

“Yes, I can hear you perfectly fine now. I have poor reception in my building, I’m afraid. Try repeating yourself again, I’ve moved elsewhere in the building.”

Hermione let out a nervous laugh, gaze sweeping around her bedroom for the hundredth time before training her eyes back down to her lap. 

_ It was only his reception. Nothing to worry about. Calm down, Hermione. It’s going to be okay, you’re awake. _

“I had a nightmare, doctor. The same one, except it, was different. It wasn’t like all the others, it was so much  _ worse. _ ”

“Worse? How was this dream different from the others?” Tom was patient, neither forceful nor heartless. He was exactly what she needed, and Hermione did not hesitate in explaining in careful detail each nuance of the dream.

She mentioned the strange sensation and the new conversation with the creature. She told him of how she could actually  _ move _ , and how, even then, she’d been powerless to do anything. Once, she’d told the doctor that perhaps if she could, she wouldn’t be as terrified, but that had been wrong.

It was stupid to think that moving around could dispel the effect that nightmare had on her. Seeing monsters in one’s head that they could not control, every night, did that to a person. It certainly didn’t help that she was depressed and isolated—that she’d moved to America after years of battling with demons she’d refused to face. Both her incapacity to bury her parents back home and the fear that their murderer was still  _ out  _ there, another burden upon her shoulders.

She was  _ weak _ . Nothing that she did would ever be enough. Her parents were gone, her friends were abroad, and she worked a miserable job that amounted to nothing. The highlight of her life was her pro bono, and now, because of this stupid condition, she couldn’t even do  _ that. _

_ What would everyone think of me if they saw me? What would my mum say? What would my dad do? _

“Hermione…”

It was because she was a failure that she was having these dreams. These things didn’t happen to someone that admitted to themselves that they were broken, that pieces of themselves had been lost or rearranged into some unrecognizable shape. She should never have left, should never have stayed  _ home  _ that day—

“ _ Hermione.” _

She blinked, mouth parting open in surprise at the forcefulness in the man’s voice. She’d never heard him speak so sharply before. He’d always been mild-mannered, if not a bit dry. This was new. Vastly different from the doctor she knew, from the man that was hardly ever ruffled by a single thing she said.

“You’re going to be alright. I cannot pretend to know what demons are lurking in your mind aside from the ones in your nightmares, but you are not alone.”

_ What? _

Tom sighed over the phone, as if he’d heard her silent question from all the way on the other side of the city. Or wherever it was that Dr. Riddle lived, she wasn’t privy to that kind of information.

“You speak fondly of your friends when I’ve asked in the past. They are there for you, Hermione. I am your doctor, but I assure you that you are not a failure nor incompetent. Your nightmares are simply that:  _ nightmares. _ ”

Hermione’s mouth fell open in surprise, frozen stiff by what she was hearing. Dr. Riddle was comforting  _ her?  _ She knew that he had to make a living somehow, that he was excellent at what he did, but his reviews regarding his bedside manner were not the most superb. Certainly, he was polite but there was no  _ warmth  _ to it. 

But this? This sounded genuine. 

_ Did he actually care? _ Hermione nearly asked, but caught herself just before she did. It didn’t matter whether he did or didn’t. She needed this, needed to know that she wasn’t fighting some losing battle with her own sanity on the line. 

She needed hope, to know that this monster wouldn’t win, even if all seemed bleak from her vantage point.

“You’ve always been in control,  _ been free _ —”

Hermione dropped her phone.

_ You’ve always been free. You’ve always been free. You’ve always been free. You’ve always been free. You’ve always been free. You’ve always been— _

The words were on an endless loop. They echoed in her mind, each syllable pronounced with care. Almost as if it were speaking directly to her, loud and clear. Like a scratched record that only made it two minutes into a song before it bounced back to the same three words and back, unable to go beyond. 

She’d heard those words before. The demon had crooned them into her ear, had promised her pain and horror. Its mouth had been so close to her own, its eyes glinting like a dying star in the night sky. It was unmistakable. 

Dr. Riddle had said the words. Words that should have remained buried and forgotten. It had to be a coincidence, it  _ had  _ to be. What were the odds that Dr. Riddle would repeat those exact words within the same few hours? Hermione didn’t dare pick up the phone, the eerie silence emanating from it enough to shoot adrenaline up her spine.

“Poor poor, Hermione.”

A scream tore from her mouth when a voice purred right against the shell of her ear, and hot hands clasped onto her shoulders, holding her in place. She kicked out, hands reaching up to claw at the fingers wrapped over her shoulders, but they did not move. It was like trying to move a boulder with her bare hands.

“Afraid that you’re losing your mind, love?” It asked, its voice somehow different from the last dream. It was no longer a weak hiss, no longer a high-pitched sound equivalent to nails dragging across a chalkboard. 

No, it was deeper. Warmer.

“Let me go!” Hermione shouted, twisting and kicking out in vain when its hold did not let up. It was not fazed by pain, her scratches, even cutting its skin, did  _ nothing _ .

“Then, by all means.”

The creature released her, and Hermione bolted off her bed and towards the door with a speed she’d no idea she was capable of. She’d never been a runner, never did more than speed walk or take the stairs at her apartment complex. But now, she was running towards the door like she’d been running marathons all her life.

_ Come on, you have to get out. You have to get out.  _

Hermione nearly slipped on the tiled floor, something wet and sticky clinging to the underside of her socks when she slammed into the door with more speed than warranted. She twisted the knob, unwilling to look back and see for herself if it was chasing after her, and pulled—

The door refused to move.

Hermione’s blood ran cold.

“Did you actually think I would let you leave?”

Hermione bit her lip, hands clinging stubbornly to the doorknob in spite of its refusal to open up. She needed to think of something, to do something. But she didn’t normally leave self-defense weapons in her bedroom. No, never. She had a razor in her bathroom, but what use would a leg shaver have when there was a monster currently waiting at her back?

She didn’t even have a butter knife lying about.  _ God _ , why did she have to be so meticulous about everything? If she wasn’t so structured or organized, then perhaps she’d have a bloody butterknife lying by her bedside table.

“Come now, Hermione. That simply would not do.”

Terror threatened to consume at the mere prospect of what the creature could do, the multitude of scenarios in her head more devastating and horrible than the last. All of them ended in death, but the manner in which she  _ died _ , the way that the light left her eyes...it was too much for her to handle in one evening, just shortly after having a nightmare.

_ Think, Hermione, think. _

Her sheets slithered and rustled from somewhere at her back, and Hermione’s stomach plummeted. Her time was running out. She had to think of something or she would be trapped with this monster for god knew how long.

_ Fuck. _

“I did not spend so long cultivating you to let all my hard work go to waste.”

A sharp breath slipped from her mouth. She almost laughed, realization smacking her in the face.

_ Of course. _

This was only a dream. This wasn’t  _ real _ . She could wake up at any time and this would all be over. All she had to do was distract the monster long enough that she’d wake up. The creature couldn’t follow her into the waking world as easily. It was only ever when she was exhausted, worked to the bone by her job, that it slipped out from between the cracks.

“And what is that hard work? Frightening me?” Hermione spun around, unprepared to meet the creature head on, but finding that she didn’t have a choice. If she wanted to get out of this unscathed, to survive another night with a monster in her head, she had to bite the bullet now.

_ You can do this. _

The creature was standing directly in front of her. It had somehow eaten up the short space between her bed and the door in a matter of moments. Perhaps, in the time Hermione had taken to convince herself to act, she wasn’t sure.

It was tall, far taller than she envisioned. It loomed over her, a shadowy specter with bright red eyes and milky white skin littered with brilliant scales. A serpentine man, now that she had time to look more closely at him without panic.

But there was something different about him, something she couldn’t quite put her finger on—

“You’re an intelligent woman.” The creature hissed, and Hermione pressed herself closer against the door, watching the way his body swayed like dark smoke in the air. The bottom of his shadow slid against the floor, like a cloak too long and thick for the monster’s frame. “Why don’t you tell me? As someone as educated as you are, I’m certain you can uncover the truth without my input.”

Hermione’s breath hitched when he lifted his hand, nails sharp and pale white, and pressed it to her cheek as he had in all of her nightmares. It was gentle, the way he caressed the apple of her cheeks, and skimmed down to the corner of her jaw, but Hermione did not dare blink. A breath barely passed through her lips, mindful of his claws and how they could easily gouge her eyes out.

Frustration welled up inside her, unable to think clearly when the monster was invading her personal space and sucking up all the air in the room with its pestilence. 

“I know you want something from me. Something that you think I have, that you  _ need _ .” Hermione said after a beat, swallowing hard when the monster bent down from his massive height to look her in the eye, his blood red eyes singing with mirth and bloodlust. “I don’t know what that is, but you think that if you erode me away, that if you keep slipping into my dreams, you’ll eventually get it.”

The creature did not speak for some time, choosing instead to watch her, drink in the fear she was doing a terrible job of masking. She had never been a good liar, always  _ always  _ the first one to cave and the first one to be caught, tongue-tied by the lie she’d first spun. How she made it as a lawyer when her duties entailed misdirection was still a mystery...

“Very good.”

The creature pressed his forehead against hers, hot breath fanning across her face. 

Resisting the urge screaming for her to recoil, Hermione held still, staring directly into the monster’s eyes. Looking, she wasn’t sure, for some sort of compassion or humanity. 

But there wasn’t any, there was only death. Only mischief and sadistic glee at her expense.

“Do you know what it is that I want, Hermione?” The creature purred, and Hermione stopped breathing entirely, frozen into a block of ice when his hands pressed on either side of her head, caging her against the door. “Why I dwell in your dreams? Why I speak to you when you’re most vulnerable?”

Swallowing, Hermione shook her head no. She had no clue why he did, she only knew that he wanted something. The reason had never mattered to her, only the issue in itself. She spent her days thinking about getting rid of him, never once pondering on  _ why  _ he had chosen her out of the millions of depressed human beings in the world.

“ _ Because he’s there, waiting. _ ” The creature pressed his nose against hers, eyes blinding and suffocating. It was like falling into an ocean of red, a sea of blood that would never dry out as long as innocent souls continued to bleed for the mistress of death. “ _ Asleep, the blight of humanity keeping him carefully contained.” _

_ What? _

The creature laughed a high and reedy laugh, the sound a high pitched hiss that could easily shatter glass. It sounded so  _ wrong _ , the way it melted into a  _ human  _ laugh after mere seconds. It was a warm and masculine sound, a sound that sounded so  _ familiar _ , that sounded so much like—

Then, the shadows began to recede. The black was being pulled back, the white and the red of its eyes dissipating like smoke until black bled through the red, until ivory skin revealed itself from beneath the monster’s face, until hair as black as obsidian grew out from the top of its head—

Hermione’s breath caught, her hand flying to her mouth to contain her scream when the face staring back at her was no longer the face of a monster, a visage only her own fucked up imagination could come up with. 

It was...Dr. Riddle. 

“A handsome fellow, is he not?” The creature said, tone mocking and all wrong coming from her doctor. This was the man she had placed all her trust in, who she had  _ opened  _ herself to.

She couldn’t believe it,  _ refused  _ to believe it. 

“What did you  _ do  _ to Dr. Riddle?”

Horror overtook her, shoulders trembling uncontrollably when Dr. Riddle _ —no, the creature, the  _ **_creature_ ** —smirked, eyes lit with delight.  

“You like this human.” He said, hand slipping away from the door to tangle in her hair, wading through her untamable curls. “Ah, no need to be surprised. I can tell, your expression  _ betrays  _ you.”

Hermione didn’t say anything, refusing to give the monster any more ammunition. He was only fucking with her; he was only playing with her head. That wasn’t Riddle, the creature had only taken on his face. This was nothing but a dream, a bloody  _ nightmare  _ where there were no rules, no limits to what the monster could do. 

“How inappropriate, Hermione—”

“ _ Shut up! _ ” She hissed, fear forgotten, to catch onto the collar of the monster’s cloak, unable to stand any more of this bullshite. 

He could taunt her. He could mess with her head, but she refused to let him mess with her friends, with innocent people she had indirectly drawn into her problems. 

“You leave him alone. He has nothing to do with this, with  _ us _ —” Hermione began, knuckles white with how tightly she gripped onto his collar. “If you want to drive me insane, if you want to suck out my soul and torture me for an eternity,  _ just bloody do it.  _ But leave Dr. Riddle out of this, leave  _ Harry _ , out of this.”

Dr. Riddle— **_the monster_ ** , she amended quickly in her head—tilted his head, eyes flashing with something before she was suddenly pressed against the wall, the doorknob smashing mercilessly against her back.

A curse slipped from her lips, mouth wide with her cry and then its mouth was on hers, all tongue and teeth, devouring her as if this were his first taste of human contact he’s had after centuries without it. Hermione struggled against him, biting along his mouth, but Dr. Riddle was not dissuaded.

A knee pushed between her legs, sliding along the center of her crotch to rub against her, and Hermione threw her head back, choking on the feeling of Dr. Riddle’s teeth biting just as viciously against her lips. 

_ Stop. _

Closing her eyes, Hermione fell still when there was no stopping him, when his arms and legs were too strong. They bound her, pressed her into the door until nothing could free her from his poisonous embrace, until her own mouth ceased biting and his followed suit, tongue sliding along the seam of her mouth, tasting where their blood mixed into a sickening flavor.

Then, Dr. Riddle’s tongue pushed further inside, longer than was humanly possible, longer than she ever thought a tongue could be. Hermione’s eyes shot open in shock, unable to keep her eyes closed when his tongue slid further and further inside her mouth until he was blocking her windpipe, until she could no longer  _ breathe  _ through his suffocating hold.

“ _ Mmph _ !” She screamed into his mouth, but he did not release her, did not stop looking at her with his dark eyes. They were fixed on hers, curious and intrigued by the terror she failed to hide and the way her hands scratched along his shoulders and neck to free herself.

But he didn’t. He didn’t stop even when her eyes began to darken at the corners, when spots danced along her vision and she could no longer keep her eyes open. 

Her arms fell uselessly on her sides, her head spinning.

_ I’m going to die… _

Then, almost as if sensing her thoughts, he pulled back, a long string of red saliva between their lips.

But still, she couldn’t breathe. There was something lodged in her throat, still moving, still writhing with its need to burst out of her mouth. She gagged, the movement jarring her uvula, and it was in that moment, when her eyes focused on Dr. Riddle’s face, that she realized that his tongue hadn’t been a tongue at all, but a—

The head of a live snake burst from her mouth, pouring endlessly from her throat.

_ No, no, no, no _ —

Its head twisted, its thick body keeping her mouth open, and Hermione watched as two glowing eyes neared her face, a slimy tongue flicking across her nose. She couldn’t think, couldn’t  _ breathe _ .

Her throat was burning, aching with each movement the creature made. It was the only warning she had, its head tilting to one side in a similar fashion as the  _ monster  _ had done once in the past, before it began to burrow back into her throat.

A scream climbed up her throat, but it never came. Her screams were muffled, lost to the writhing of its body, unable to come free. Tears fell uselessly from her eyes, the heat of Dr. Riddle’s eyes enough to pull her attention away from the terrifying thing sliding down her throat to the gaunt face of a bloody madman.

  
“ _ Shhh _ , _ don’t cry, love.”  _ His face leaned in to kiss away the tears, to drink the salty substance, his sharp-forked tongue too close to her eye. “ _ Everything is going to be fine.” _


	6. Haunted

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We are almost at the finish line. I hope you are all enjoying yourselves so far. Keep in mind that this is not beta-read, so there may be typos I missed in my edit runs.
> 
> Things take a turn :) Many of the tags become applicable here.

Hermione shot awake with a cough, hands flying to her throat. The horrid sensation of a foreign body slipping inside her throat made her gag, her hands clutching tightly around her neck.

_Shhh, don’t cry, love._

Hermione rolled out of the bed and rushed to the bathroom. She almost didn’t make it to the toilet, bile rushing up through her esophagus. Yanking the toilet lid open, Hermione expelled the contents down the porcelain, the sound like static in her ears.

 _God_.

Tears burned at the corners of her eyes, snot and drool trickling down her chin as she heaved over the rim a second and third time. It was awful. She could barely breathe, her nose clogged with her tears as she flushed the toilet repeatedly to clear it up.

She didn’t dare look at the contents, though. Not when there was the slightest possibility that the _snake_ would crawl up from between her vomit and look her in the eye. The snake that had fucking _stuffed_ itself down her throat—that she could, if she thought hard enough, still imagine squirming in her insides.

Hermione rested her head against the toilet when even bile refused to come up. It was cool and wet against her skin—soaked, perhaps, with her stomach contents. Hermione couldn’t find it within herself to care, greedily sucking in air to stave off the hysteria lingering like a shadow in the back of her mind.

_One. Two. Three._

She counted her breaths, forced her rattled thoughts to settle on this single consistency.

_Four. Five. Six._

She didn’t know how long she laid that way, her heart still beating a mile a minute from the terror she’d experienced at the hands of her most recent nightmare. It could have easily been minutes, been _hours_ , until she scraped up the courage to lift her head, to open her eyes and look over the rim and into the toilet.

There was nothing there except her own vomit. No snake or snake-faced doctors lurked from inside the rim, but it was to be expected. She _shouldn’t_ have been afraid. She was awake—no longer trapped in an endless nightmare that looped over and over until she couldn’t think.

_You’re awake, Hermione. It’s okay, okay—_

The sound of a phone blaring made her flinch, her knee nearly banging into the toilet. She swiveled around on the bathroom floor, eyes scanning around the room for her phone.

It was sounding away by her nightstand—exactly where she had left it before retiring to bed.

Slowly, Hermione rose from the toilet, her footsteps shaky and deliberate as she made her way over to her phone. It was face down and Hermione hesitated, uncertain if her throat could even manage conversation right now. It was still raw and achy from throwing up, and whoever was calling would certainly want to know _why_ this was the case.

_Wonderful._

She entertained the thought of simply lying and telling them she had had a bout of food poisoning before she dismissed it, grasping onto the phone and turning it over to see who it was.

The name staring back at her made her nearly drop her phone.

_Dr. Riddle._

Hermione’s breaths quickened until she was barely sucking in air. A bone-deep anxiety exploded in the back of her mind—like a thousand whispering voices urging her to flee. Her fingers tightened on her phone, unable to curb the terror now nipping at her senses.

Hermione had frozen.

The phone continued to blare, but still, she made no move to answer.

This was true _fear_. Yes, it was unmistakable that that was what this was. She was scared—irrefutably terrified of what Dr. Riddle could want this late at night. 3:15 in the morning was hardly the hour for a doctor to be making a house call.

Then, it stopped.

The silence, however, somehow proved to be worse than the grating ring of her phone going off. Normally, Hermione could settle into the quiet and take that moment to right herself, to roll her shoulders and brush off the unease that stuck to her like a second skin, but—

This was a silence that lingered. Like a weight, it bore down against her ears, pushed and _ground_ against her eardrums until they were ready to burst.

Hermione took a step back, unable to stand the silence any longer, her eyes scanning through the darkness, waiting. Uncertain now if she was even awake, if she had been mistaken, wrong in believing that she had managed to escape the nightmare.

Maybe she’d never woken up and was still at the mercies of her own dreams. The thought was enough to make her throat constrict.

Her cell phone burst to life in her hands.

Hermione screamed, dropping it to the floor and scrambling as far away from it as she could go without running out of her bedroom. Her eyes were glued to it, watching the phone vibrate on the ground.

_It’ll be over soon. Just don’t break. Don’t break._

“ _Don’t fall asleep,_ ” Hermione whispered, watching her phone light up one final time before it all went dark.

* * *

“Are you sure everything is alright? You’ve been missing our appointments.”

Hermione cringed, unable to focus on the phone pressed against her ear when the monster was hidden in the shadows, waiting. She could feel him even if she couldn’t see him. He was never too far away these days. Sometimes, she could almost hear the soft pulse of his heart, sense just where his fingers hovered over her neck.

She hated those days the most.

“Everything is fine, Dr. Riddle. It’s just been difficult these days since I’ve returned to the office.” She lied, trying to recall the last time she’d looked through a case file or spoken to any of her colleagues at the law firm.

Had it been weeks? Months? Hermione had lost track.

“I can’t help you if you don’t come in for a follow-up, Hermione.”

A rattled breath left her. She couldn’t stand it when he called her by her first name—couldn’t help but think to the nightmares, to the instances caught in the limbo of slumber and awareness, when that voice was loudest. Crooning for her to—

_Hermione, darling. Hermione, love. Hermione, sweetheart. Hermione, sweetling. Hermione, mine._

“I know that, doctor, but really. There have been no episodes since I started treatment.”

 _Such a little liar_ , a terrible voice whispered into her mind. _Don’t you want to see your doctor, Hermione? Don’t you want to pull open his skull and see just what he’s thinking—_

“—good, at least. I would like for you to come in today.”

Blinking, Hermione tried to catch up, to focus. There was simply no way she was going to see him. She knew it wasn’t fair, that it wasn’t his fault that the monster had used his face in its latest bout to terrorize her into giving in.

 _Giving into what?_ She didn’t know.

“Unfortunately, I can’t today. I told a client I was going to meet with him this afternoon.”

She was taking no chances.

There was a long pause on the other side. It was long enough to make her nervous, to fidget where she was curled on the couch, eyes trained on the open doorway of her bedroom.

“I called your place of employment.”

_What?_

Hermione’s mouth opened and closed, but words refused to come.

“Y-you did what?” She sprang from her place on the couch, unable to stand sitting any longer. Something familiar, like fire, like _anger_ , swelled in her chest. Hermione clung to the emotion, relieved that she was still capable of feeling something other than _fear._

“I suspected that you’d been lying to me. You’re not a very good liar, you know.”

Rage overcame what little relief she had bubbling in her stomach, her eyes burning with her outrage. She’d never felt more alive in her life.

“How _dare_ you? You’re my doctor, not my fucking keeper,” Hermione snarled, gripping her phone so tightly she swore it splintered in her grip. Whatever. If she broke her cell phone, it would be just one more additional way to avoid the outside world.

 _And leave you at the mercies of the monster in your mind._ Another, more rational, voice supplied. Hermione ignored it.

“If I don’t want to see you, you can’t _make_ m—”

“Hermione, I’m only concerned for your safety. You’ve been behaving strangely and it is my fear that without proper treatment and supervision you might—”

“I might what? Hurt myself? Far fucking from it. I’m not suicidal, Dr. Riddle. I don’t want to kill myself if that’s what you’re so worried about. I just want _space_.”

Hermione was not having it.

The line went silent once again before a loud sigh erupted from the speaker. Hermione’s hackles rose at the sound, alarmed at how similar that sounded to the static that had emanated from her phone the night before. Hermione tried not to think about.

“...I will no longer interfere with your affairs. I apologize if I violated your confidence. Please understand that I do _care_ for you. It is...uncommon for me to be this invested in a patient.” Riddle said, contrite.

Hermione’s shoulders went slack, her anger deflating.

 _Damn it_ ,Hermione cursed beneath her breath, hand carding through her hair in frustration. It wasn’t his fault. None of this was. Taking it out on him would resolve nothing, not when the true source of her anger was just a short distance away—hiding in the darkest corners of her apartment.

_This wasn’t fair._

“I appreciate that.” An emotion she refused to acknowledge welled up inside her, tears burning at the corners of her eyes. She wanted to cry into the receiver, to do something other than hole herself up in her apartment until she finally lost her mind.

Instead, she wiped the tears that managed to escape from the corners of her eyes and rolled her shoulders as if to shrug off the sorrow poking against her ribs.

“If I need anything, I will call you. Until then, please just give me space?”

Hermione bit her lip when Riddle did not answer for some time, the silence like thunder in her ears. She counted to one hundred and back, thinking of anything else but the static in the air and the heaviness settling around her like dense mist—the silence exacerbating the horrid reality that the monster was still—

“Alright. When you feel ready to talk, please remember that I am willing to listen. I am a mere phone call away.”

Hermione released a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding, and smiled into her phone, ignoring the pleased purr echoing in the back of her head. It was like a finger sliding between the notches of her spine. She pretended she hadn’t heard anything at all but the soft sound of Riddle’s breathing through the receiver.

“Thank you.”

It was the warmest she’d felt since the nightmares began. Even if that genuine relief had quickly been doused when a cold breath curled against the nape of her neck. A reminder that the monster had never left.

* * *

A scream caught in her throat, the weight of it sitting in her esophagus like a caged bird.

She was frozen, her limbs locked in place as a figure as pale as snow emerged from the shadows with eyes too bright to be human. So red, that one could almost mistake them for the stop light at a traffic intersection.

“ _How many petals shall I pull before you’ve nothing left to keep you whole?_ ”

Hermione trembled when the creature began to shift, to bend and twist, until Dr. Riddle was the monster gliding toward her. She hated this, hated how it seized on where she was most vulnerable—tender—and exposed it to its cruelty.

It was like he knew all her secrets, could see into her head and lift the very fears she clutched close to her heart.

_“How many nights shall I make you scream before even your cries are no longer yours?”_

He stopped beside her, his hand reaching for her.

“Don’t—”

She watched him, eyes wide, as he pressed his fingertips against the top of her hand, tracing an unseen path from her knuckles to her wrist and back. She didn’t understand what he was trying to accomplish with this; how this all amounted to some elaborate plan to get her to give in.

She didn’t get _it._ None of this made any sense.

The monster did not speak as he explored her, his eyes drawn to where their hands touched, circling over her fluttering heartbeat on her wrist, before he ceased his exploration and pulled away, eyes snapping to hers.

There was an unstated question in his gaze. The twitch of his brow and the small curl of his lip evidenced as much. He wanted her to speak. Hermione tried not to laugh.

She’d sooner bite off her own tongue before she gave him what he wanted.

“ _Fight this all you like, little Hermione."_

Riddle said, sharp and bloodied teeth gleaming in the dark.

“ _But you will never be free of me.”_

His lips stretched into a secretive smile, his blood red eyes glowing with pleasure.

She braced herself, her heart racing when it stepped closer and _closer_. Its mouth parted to reveal monstrous white teeth that only grew more pronounced, more deformed the longer she looked at them.

“ _I have seen your heart, and it is mine.”_

He was on her in seconds, arms pushing down against her shoulders, restraining her.

 _“Your dreams—_ ”

Still, she could not move, frozen in terror—under the weight of his presence as his mouth descended on her neck, his teeth grazing her throat.

“— _Your fears, little Hermione.”_

Then his teeth were in her neck, jaw grinding against her flesh _._ The pain didn’t register, not at first. Even when he ravaged her like a wild beast, tearing large chunks of flesh with a predatory growl.

Pain exploded around her, delayed but no less debilitating.

Hermione screamed at the same time the spell holding her frozen on the bed broke, hot tears running down her cheeks from the agony. It was like she was being sawed at the neck.

“No!”  She kicked and fought, screams of terror and agony straining her vocal cords. But she couldn’t stop, not when he was chewing on her neck, biting, and biting, and _biting—_

Another shrill scream erupted from her throat, followed by a loud, desperate sob. Her nails dug into the monster's shoulders, clawing for dear life. Still, he ate at her, drank her up until finally, she collapsed in the bed.

Spent and weak, her limbs like dead weights.

 _Please._ She wanted to beg, to scream, to shout, but even those sounds were overcome by the serrated edge of his teeth.

Her vision blurred, Hermione sank into the bed, droplets running down her chest, the side of her neck, into her _bed._

His mouth sucked at her blood, the reedy sounds of his breaths, drowning out the screams in her head pleading for it to end.

_Squelch._

And then all fell silent.

* * *

When Hermione woke the next morning, it was to a deep, pulsing ache at the side of her neck.

_What?_

With an agonized hiss, her hand trailed up the side of her neck, stopping right where the ache was most concentrated. A sharp pain that quickly followed after was enough to leave her winded, and Hermione stumbled from out of her bed, sleep still crusted at the corner of her eyes.

It was fucking _awful_. It was like someone had taken a hold of her neck and had crushed it between his fingers.

She stopped in front of the mirror, nearly overturning the small shelf between the sink and mirror in her haste to find the painkillers. The side of her neck pulsed, the ache spreading from that single point down to her shoulder.

 _Fuck_.

Had she slept on it wrong?

Bottles clattered to the ground, and Hermione swore, hands shaking. She wasn’t going to bend down and reach for them now.

Hermione glanced at the mirror and froze.

A violent tremor overtook her, the last vestiges of sleep melting away into true panic.

 _No_.

There were dark bruises along the side of her throat, stopping just shy of her shoulder. The skin was red and swollen where it wasn’t lined with black.

_How was this possible? How had she done this to herself?_

Everything hit her all at once.

 _Red eyes, sharp teeth, a hideous snarl_ —

Hermione stumbled away from the mirror, tripping on the bottles on the floor and nearly falling on her ass.

 _No. No. No_.

She ran out of the bathroom, rushing into her room, only to freeze when the shadows by her window began to undulate and writhe. Like live serpents.

This couldn’t be real. She had to be dreaming. She _had_ to be bloody dreaming—

 _“Hermione_.”

She bolted past her bedroom door and into her living room, the hairs on the nape of her neck standing on end. She had heard him. That was _his_ voice.

“ _Little Hermione.”_

Her feet skidded on the floor before she slammed into the front door, her hands clawing at the different locks for a way out. Her mind was screaming bloody murder, practically screeching for her to keep moving, to fucking _run_.

She had just gotten the door open, twisting the knob and yanking on the handle with all her might, when ice clasped onto her shoulder and the door was slammed back shut.

_Oh god._

Terror burned up her esophagus, and Hermione couldn’t breathe, could barely think through the noxious emotion when that cold weight on her shoulder squeezed, sharp points digging into the skin.

_A hand—it’s a fucking—_

“ _Now where_ —” An all too familiar voice murmured right against her ear, and Hermione let out a shrill sound. Her knees were shaking, heart ready to burst when that hand squeezed her once again, as if daring her to move. She didn’t. She was too terrified to even turn around and look behind her.

“— _do you think you’re going?”_

* * *

Hermione woke up with a scream on her lips, hands gripping her neck tight enough to choke.

_His eyes, oh god, his eyes—_

She didn’t need to turn on a light to know he was standing by her bedroom door, waiting.

* * *

There were twelve missed calls from Harry, but Hermione didn’t have the courage to answer the phone. Not when it was clutched in the monster’s too wide hand, his eyes peering at the device with interest.

Hermione was in her kitchen, but Rid— _the monster_ — stood between the open doorway and her living room, blocking her escape.

“Are you not going to answer? Do you not _miss_ him?” He asked, eyes turning to her with a look that promised both retribution and horrors beyond her comprehension. Hermione didn’t want to find out what those horrors were.

That didn’t mean, however, that she’d cower and beg for him to stop. She refused to play that game.

“No.”

Hermione stood her ground, lifting her chin to show him she was not afraid. She would not bend, would not _break_. There was no point pretending he wasn’t real, that he wasn’t _there_ , when she awoke the previous morning with bruises tattooed to the column of her throat.

“Oh? Poor _poor_ Harry. I wonder what he would think if he heard you no—”

“Shut up. Shut the _fuck_ up.”

Hermione was seething, shaking both in anger and terror. Those words were never meant to come out. And _yet—_

They were out in the open. At this point, she was just too frustrated, too _sick_ of this to take them back. She had never insulted him so directly, so readily. Not when it wore Riddle’s face, not when he was this clear.

_When his mouth had been on her neck had left bruises the very next morning._

“How...impolite, Hermione. Is that any way to speak to your doctor?”

Riddle’s lips quirked into a smile, eyes flashing red. Hermione’s heart wanted to crawl up her throat. She stepped deeper into the kitchen, watching how he placed the phone down on the countertop without ripping his gaze away from hers. Harry was no longer his priority. It was all her now.

_Shit._

“You’re not my doctor,” Hermione denied, her fingers squeezing into tight fists when he took a step toward her. Hermione took one back, despite herself.

Cocking his head to one side, his smile grew until he was grinning at her from ear to ear. It was terrifying, how handsome and malicious that single expression could be. It promised pain and more than Hermione could stand to contemplate.

“Are you sure about that?”

Riddle laughed at her, high and unhinged. It didn’t fit his face, sounded all fucking _wrong_ , and Hermione reached behind her, scrambling to get ahold of a drawer. She needed to grab something, to defend herself somehow.

The scratch of her nails against wood made him pause, mid-step. His face blanked, a curious gleam catching in his eyes that made the red of his irises more sinister. Hermione’s movements grew more desperate in response.

“What are you doing, little Hermione?” Riddle said, a playful note in his voice that made the hairs on her arms stand on end. Ice shot up her spine, and she didn’t wait for him to move before she tore the drawer open behind her, digging for a knife or _something_ to hurt him with.

She had given him her back, and  _god_ —she wanted nothing more than to turn around. His eyes were burning into her scalp, were dragging like sharp points up her neck—but she didn’t dare look. Not yet. She wasn’t armed.

_Please. Please. Please._

She didn’t know who she was begging to—god, an angel, _whatever_ —she hoped they would answer her pleas. That they didn’t forsake her, abandon her.

A breath like sharpened nails wafted along the back of her throat, and Hermione swiveled around, brandishing a knife. She hardly noticed when the knife went through hard flesh, her fingers tingling with something warm and sticky.

“My, my, _my_ —”

Hermione’s eyes had slammed shut, unable to bear looking at him and what she’d done. The temptation to pull the knife out and stab him again, again, and _again_ was so strong she was almost nauseous with it.

“You’ll have to do better than that if you want to kill me. Here—” His hands were on her trembling ones, his grip so gentle that Hermione’s eyes opened against her better judgment. Red assaulted her vision, and Hermione froze, unable to turn away with how close Riddle’s face was.

Faintly, Hermione could hear the soft _plit plit_ of his blood dripping on the ground, but Hermione hardly registered the sound. Not when her mind was screaming, terrified, of what he planned to do.

He pulled the knife out, and her ears were assaulted by the sound of blood splattering to the floor. It was like a small river. One that drenched her fingers in crimson and pooled on the ground to warm the tips of her toes.

Sucking in a deep gasp, Hermione tried not to be sick when the monster lined the tip of the knife over his sternum—centimeters from where she’d lodged the knife into his body.

_God, that was his heart._

“Put it right here. I know you can do it.”

Hermione couldn’t tear her gaze away from his, even when she wanted nothing more than to close her eyes and drive the steak knife through him over and over again. She didn’t want to do it when the monster wore Riddle’s face.

It wasn’t a _person_. This wasn’t her doctor, but—

It was dirty. Profane, somehow. To knowingly harm someone that looked _human—_

“Oh, _Hermione_ —”

The monster breathed, hand falling away from hers to place them on her shoulders, to drag her close enough that she could taste his breath—could note the flecks of burgundy and violet in his eyes. They swirled, twisted into shapes she couldn’t describe.

_Beautiful._

She wanted to push her fingers into his eyes, to trace the shape of them and see just what colors they would become if she dug her fingers in. It was a violent thought, but Hermione was far from disgusted. Warmth spread all over, in her. It clouded her senses, made her mouth water with so much _hunger_.

 _God, she was just so hungry_.

“You look _famished_ ,” Riddle’s voice made her toes curl, made her insides curl in an entirely different way.

 _Please_.

Then, his lips were against hers. Gentle and soft, how Hermione imagined Riddle’s mouth would feel like against hers when her thoughts had strayed in directions they shouldn’t. Ecstasy burned through her veins like acid, burning her from the inside out.

It was too much. It was too little. It was everything she could have ever wanted.

With a gasp, the knife slipped from her grip and landed on the ground with a loud clatter. His teeth caught her bottom lip, and Hermione moaned, yanking him closer.

 _More_.

Euphoria sang in her blood, heart beating so quickly that Hermione couldn’t tell if it was from the adrenaline, from the bitter stench of blood in her nose, or the chill of death in his mouth.

 _This is wrong_ , a voice murmured in the back of her head, terrified. Hermione didn’t have the heart to listen to it, not when his eyes were so beautiful. The red, red, _red_ of them like dying embers in a flame. She wanted to be burned alive, to combust from the inside out until there was nothing but cinders left where she once stood.

_Like a phoenix, you will die and be reborn again._

“ _Hermione,”_ he groaned into the kiss, teeth catching her bottom lip between his before sinking his teeth into the flesh, the taste of pain and iron blooming in her mouth, sliding down her throat, and—

__“Hermione_.”  
_

* * *

Hermione shot up with a gasp, nearly toppling from the couch. There was an uncomfortable warmth between her thighs that demanded that she touch, that she bury her fingers deep and hook it up, and _up_ until the burning stopped.

This time she didn’t make it to the bathroom before she heaved all of what she’d eaten the previous morning, the taste of their blood still thick in her mouth.

* * *

The phone was in her hand this time, dial tone loud in the silence of her apartment. Dr. Riddle’s number had been pre-typed into the device, but Hermione had yet to call. She didn’t have the heart. She wanted his help, she _did_ , wanted to confide in someone about the nature of her dreams.

But, but, _but—_

The monster had made it a habit to wear Riddle’s face, and _only_ his face. The only trace, the only evidence that he wasn’t her doctor, the red of his eyes and the too wide smile that split across his handsome features like a wound.

She didn’t know if she could do it. If she could bear to see him now when he was in her head, always. He lurked in the shadows, watched her as she bathed and whispered in her ear. Soft, always so loving and kind, before he touched her.

She didn’t know how to fight this, to deal with this new level of manipulation because she _knew_ what he was doing. She wasn’t stupid, wasn’t naive enough to believe that the monster did not have a plan, did not have a goal that it wished to reach.

What that was, she didn’t know. And god, he was wearing her down. Riddle was _breaking_ her, stretching her past her boiling point.

“Call him.”

The monster was back, looming behind her. Shaking, Hermione tried to ignore him, to ignore the sense of awareness she felt whenever he appeared to her. It was growing worse, so much _worse_.

He didn’t try to terrify her now. Not anymore, coming to her when she was kneeling on the shower praying for God to deliver her. His gentle fingers on the back of her neck might as well have been the serrated edge of a knife.

“No.”

Biting her lip, Hermione tried not to make any sounds when a cold nose traced the back of her neck, his hands running up her arms.

_He’s not there, he’s not there, he’s not the—_

“Why fight the pull? Nothing would _please_ you more than to see him.”

An ache spread from somewhere unknown in her chest, rotting her from the inside out. It was like poison. _He_ was like poison. Cancerous and vile, and-and-

Hermione’s thoughts were scattered to the wind when his nails scratched down her arm, and her hand was suddenly in his, cocooned in his grip. Hermione could hardly breathe through the sensation, shoulders tensing when he traced patterns on the skin.

“I refuse. You will not _control_ me. You will not make me.”

Hermione tore from his hold, phone clattering to the floor. Riddle’s nose flared, a hint of annoyance bleeding through the razor blade smile.

“Perhaps.”

Hermione’s lip quivered, but she did not wilt beneath his gaze. She would not comply, would not follow its suggestions any more than she already has. He wanted something—something _precious_ —and the only way to get it was through her.

She would not be his pawn in whatever sick game this was.

Then, the monster straightened, gathering himself until none of his true nature remained. Not that it would do much good now. She already knew he was black from the inside out. There was nothing good, or _holy_ about this creature wearing the face of an angel.

“Even stone splinters under the ravages of time.”

Riddle stepped back into the living room corridor, his body becoming one with the shadows until all that remained were the bright red of his eyes.

_“And your will, little Hermione, will _splinter.”_  
_

* * *

Exhaustion weighed her down, her eyes opening but not truly seeing the shapes above her. It kept her bound, kept her pressed into her mattress until all that she could feel was the graze of winter’s breath along her bare skin, gliding from the center of her chest to dig into the peaks of her breasts.

_Naked? When did I get undressed—_

Her eyes snapped open, a terrified gasp stumbling from her lips.

_No._

Riddle stood above her, fingers sliding down her stomach and up to dig his nails into her nipples, to coax them into hardness beneath his heated gaze.

“W-what are you doing?” Hermione could barely speak, tongue-tied when he leaned in, close enough for his warm breath to make her skin break out in gooseflesh. “Get _off_ me—”

“Shhh.”

Her voice died in her throat against her will. As if he’d compelled some primal, terrified side of her brain to cease working.

“You have lovely skin.”

Hermione tried to squirm, to _move_ , to do something, but she couldn’t. It was the same weightlessness, the same powerlessness that rendered her immobile each and every night he came to her when she was just awakening.

_Oh god._

“Holy and pure.”

Her heart nearly collapsed in her chest when he leaned in closer still, his cheek laying on her chest as if to hear the muscle pound away. Hermione had no idea what its intentions were, what it _wanted_ at that moment. Never before had Hermione been this confused as to its intentions.

This was one _hell_ of a new development.

“What the _fuck_ are you doing?” Hysteria overtook her when the creature only laughed at her, his fingers touching her bare skin with curious hands. It made her want to melt into the mattress.

“Listening.”

A choked sound escaped her when his fingers slid away from her breasts and down her stomach. Her insides clenched, a nervous sound bubbling from her neck when his nails scratched down her rib cage to dig his nails into her hip bone.

“Your heart is quite fascinating. It says so much, despite its proper owner’s best efforts to quiet the pulsations.”

Hermione did not like where this conversation was going, horror rendering her mute when Riddle had yet to remove his head from her chest. She wondered if he could hear just how scared she was; if it could tell that she was about to pass out. She didn’t know whether that was a comforting or awful notion.

“It whispers things to me, little Hermione.”

Closing her eyes, Hermione tried to think of anything but the weight of his hands against her. Touching her.

All thoughts of that went out the window when its hand went lower, the heat of it making her want to _squirm_ and buck him off like a wild animal.

“Little secrets. How insightful and controversial, they are.”

The hand did not stop its slow descent, stopping just short of touching her _cu—_

“Don’t fucking touch me” Hermione rattled against the weights, the pressure restraining her. This was—this was deplorable. Was there nothing the monster wasn’t capable of?

“You’re deathly afraid. So very terrified of what I am and can do.”

The hand renewed its path, and Hermione choked out a high-pitched sound that she wanted to strangle within an inch of her life. She felt his nails over the swell of her cunt, over the lips and gliding to the corners of her thigh. He explored her, curious, his head still pressed into her chest.

“But this fear. It does not compare to how frightened you are of yourself—”

He turned his head, chin propped on her chest to look her straight in the eye. Hermione bared her teeth at him at the same time he parted her, slickness pooling down her thighs—

__“—of your own _desires_."__

* * *

Hermione woke up leaning against her toilet, chin propped on the lid. She wanted to be sick, but there was nothing for her to expel.

She rarely ate now, her appetite lost entirely when the monster urged her to eat. She refused to listen to it, to give that monster more power than he already had over her. If she had to starve herself, just to prove a point, then she would.

Her fingers fell to her chest, to trace the same burning path the monster had taken in that dream, and Hermione sucked in a harrowed breath.

_Never again, Hermione. Never again._

She couldn’t let him get the best of her. She was calling Dr. Riddle that afternoon, even if it killed her.


	7. Possession

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And we've now arrived at the grand finale!
> 
> Thank you all so much for following me along! It's been fun writing this story, especially this chapter, and I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it :)
> 
> All the tags apply here.

Hermione tried not to buckle under the severe scrutiny of the nurse. She hadn’t been back in what felt like decades, and it was telling. The nurse looked ready to chart her off to the nearest hospital, her lip curling with more and more disdain with each shuffle of her papers.

Her results had to be less than stellar if the growing look of disappointment on the woman’s face was anything to go by. Hermione couldn’t find it within herself to be guilty, however. No matter how awful her results might be, none of that could compare to the anxiety and fear pulsing in her veins.

Perhaps, the results told the woman just that. Maybe it exposed all her little fears, revealed just how much adrenaline rushed from her brain down to her stomach and back, with each second she spent sitting in that tiny waiting room with only the nurse as company.

_ Though in all fairness, maybe half the reason for that scrutiny was really that I’m keeping that poor old woman past normal business hours _ , Hermione thought, shrinking further into her seat.

“I hope you’re aware of just what you’re in for, sweetheart,” the nurse said, eyes narrowing into thin slits when Hermione smiled back her, the picture of innocence despite the guilt and unease churning in her stomach. Hermione had an inkling of what she was going to face—Dr. Riddle had been less than pleased with her over the phone when she’d lied to him about returning to work.

She was more than aware that he’d be cross with her about her nutrition—or lack thereof. 

“I know,” Hermione began before the nurse tutted at her. Hermione should at least have gotten her name. It would have been the polite thing to do—the  _ Hermione  _ thing to do—but she had little left for pleasantries. She was exhausted, and bothering with such a thing at this point would be moot. Hermione didn’t plan to stick around long enough to need her name.

“Do you? Truly? You’ve never seen Dr. Riddle upset. It’s quite something.”

Hermione swore something foul beneath her breath, shrinking further into herself when an insidious laugh began to bubble in the back of her brain.

_ Deep breaths, Hermione. Ignore it. Ignore  _ him.  _ He’s not here. _

Hermione forced the small smile to remain on her face. She hoped it was better than what she imagined. Less crazy, maybe, than how she was feeling.

“I-er, can take guess. I know he won’t be happy with me.”

The nurse nodded her head, eyes still narrowed at her. Her response did nothing to melt the frosty exterior of the old woman, but at least, it was better than the outright disapproval on her face. That was almost too much, even for Hermione. 

And she had faced off quite a few judges in her time as an attorney. Those fossils could get quite testy over the smallest thing.

“He’ll be with you momentarily.”

The nurse didn’t wait for Hermione to speak again before standing from where she’d perched by the cabinet, the medical equipment rattling with the force of her movements

Then, she was alone. The soft click of the nurse’s shoes on the marble floor and her soft sigh the last things Hermione heard. She was now at the mercy of her own thoughts and the fears still coiling like live serpents in her gut, and gods, did she hate it.

It didn’t matter that this was the same room he’d seen her in hundreds of times before. That it was the same posters about seeking out mental wellness, the sterile quality of the setting bleeding through to her pores.

Her nerves were a mess.

She only hoped Dr. Riddle wouldn’t be long, that the doctor wouldn’t make her wait given the late hour she had shown up at his office.

It was fifteen minutes before closing. By all accounts, Dr. Riddle had no obligation to see her, even if her situation was a precarious one. But then again, Dr. Riddle had already made himself amenable to his patients by lingering at his office long past the usual business hours of five o'clock.

A closing time of seven o’clock was almost unheard of during the weekday. Let alone on a  _ Saturday. _ And yet, he allowed it.

_ He will make every exception for you, darling. Such a  _ kind  _ and  _ wonderful,  _ professional, no? _

Hermione did not dignify the monster’s words with a response. She knew better than to answer him aloud or even in her head when she wasn’t in the safety of her apartment. There, she knew she could tell him to fuck off. But here, where Dr. Riddle could see everything; it was out of the question.

She would not— _ could  _ not respond.

The monster’s mocking laughter was like nails scraping across a chalkboard, and Hermione tried not to give in to the temptation of grinding the crowns of her teeth to ignore the noise. She’d have no teeth by the end of it if she gave in to the urge.

“Hermione.”

A startled sound left her when she blinked and Dr. Riddle was suddenly in the room, the door clicking shut behind him. 

When had he arrived? Hermione brows knit with confusion. She hadn’t heard the door, felt the telltale shift of pressure when a person entered a tiny, quiet room. Had she been so lost in thought?

“You don’t look well.”

Hermione snorted, her shoulders shaking with misplaced mirth. That was the understatement of the century. She looked like  _ shit.  _ Hermione hadn’t bothered with her hair when she left her apartment, and lord knows how long it’d been since she’d taken a proper shower without it ending in tears.

“Yes, well—you could say I’ve been having a rough few weeks.”

Dr. Riddle’s lips twisted into a frown, his eyes flashing with such deep concern that Hermione was caught between preening under the attention and diverting her attention elsewhere. His eyes were not like the monster’s—they held warmth,  _ life _ , to them. 

Still, that didn’t eliminate the almost invasive quality of his observation. Dr. Riddle always managed to make her feel naked, somehow. Exposed.

“I see.”

Silence settled between them. It was long and heavy, like the grip of a hand around her neck. Hermione swallowed to relieve some of the pressure hanging in the air, unable to keep quiet now that she was here.

“I’m sorry for showing up like this. I just—I didn’t know I was coming until I was pulling into the parking lot,” Hermione confessed, hands gripping one another. They were shaking. She hoped he didn’t notice.

“I was thinking about what you told me, about our conversation over the phone and I—I couldn’t stop thinking about it.”

Dr. Riddle pulled a chair from the small desk at the corner of the room, wheeling it over until it was inches from her own shaking knees. Hermione averted her eyes to avoid the critical gleam in his eyes. It certainly didn’t help that he had decided to sit directly in front of her, leaving little room between her and the exit door on the opposite end of the room.

“I’m glad that you decided to see me, Hermione. You hadn’t sounded like you wished to come back. In fact, I was certain that I would never hear from you again.”

Hermione squeezed her hands together, nails digging into the skin. He wasn’t wrong. When she had last spoken to him, she was ready to cut off ties completely with him. It wasn’t safe.  _ She  _ didn’t trust herself when the monster was still so active, so  _ real _ , in her head.

_ As you should, little girl _ , a hiss murmured deep into the recesses of her mind. Hermione ignored it.

“You’re not wrong. I wasn’t planning on coming back. It’s—too dangerous, you know. I’m afraid I’m losing my bloody mind, doctor.”

Dr. Riddle’s head tilted to one side, expression curious, and Hermione nearly lost her nerve. The urge to run exploded in her chest, the need so strong she nearly bolted right then and there. That gesture had been so achingly familiar. It was just like the monster. The same motion, the same bloody  _ face— _

_ This is not him, Hermione. This is the doctor, this is  _ your  _ doctor. _

“Are you?” Dr. Riddle asked, hands leaving their place at the armrests of the rolling chair to drop to his lap. It was terrifying and exhilarating how close they were from the bare skin of her knees.

_ God _ , why had she left her home in nothing but a skirt and dress shirt? Why had she exposed herself, opened herself up to his inspection? 

Swallowing, Hermione looked up to him through her lashes. It took her everything to maintain eye contact, but she did it even when her heart felt like it was ready to crawl all the way up her esophagus. He couldn’t help her if she avoided him. She needed him to  _ see _ . 

“Yes. I’m so scared. So bloody terrified that one day, I’m just going to wake up and—”Hermione's voice had dropped to a whisper, and Dr. Riddle leaned in closer, as if trying to discern her meaning. Hermione wished he hadn’t. “—I won’t be myself. I’ll be someone else. Someone new and terrible.”

Dr. Riddle opened his mouth but quickly closed it. There was something in his eyes, something conflicted that made Hermione almost look back down to her lap. She didn’t, but god did she want to.

“Hermione—” Dr. Riddle said, teeth catching on his bottom lip as if trying to asses the best way to broach the topic. Hermione waited for it, breath slowing down to a halt. She wouldn’t be able to breathe until he spoke, until he voiced what was percolating in his head.

“—you will always be you. As tattered and exhausted as you are, you are one of the strongest people I know.”

Hermione bit her cheek until it bled, until she was drowning in the taste of blood and adoration. Her chest swelled with warmth, with misplaced feelings she shouldn’t feel.

“You are a wonderful person,” and then Dr. Riddle was grasping her hand and lifting it up to grip between his fingers. He might as well have touched her soul, had stuck his fingers into her insides and crushed her intestines. It was too much,  _ god _ —

Hermione should pull away. She wanted to, desperately needed to, but her hand had a mind of its own. She couldn’t yank her hand out of his grip when his hand was so  _ warm _ .

“A hardworking and brilliant woman. There is no doubt in my mind that you will not wake up and not recognize the person standing in front of the mirror.”

Dr. Riddle squeezed her hand, and Hermione, oh god, she didn’t know what she was feeling. Why did she come here? Why did she let him touch her hand, slide his thumb against the wild pulse on her wrist—

Hermione squeezed his hand, crushing it in her grip, and then her mouth was on his. He exhaled sharply against her mouth in shock, freezing in her hold.

A groan bubbled up her throat. She couldn’t stop, dragging him closer until she was forcing his hand around her waist, the heat of him scalding her through the layers of her clothes.

_ Yes _ .

Dr. Riddle opened his mouth, and Hermione’s tongue was in his mouth, curling over his gums, over the long stretch of teeth. His eyes were wide open with surprise—

_ Look at me. _

But it was the hunger in them that made her drag his hand beneath her shirt, made her other hand trace up the side of his white coat and into his hair to muss the dark locks piled on his head before pushing his face against hers to deepen the kiss.

_ “Hermione _ ,” he groaned, but Hermione didn’t give him a chance to finish. With her leg, she wheeled him closer between her parted legs, desperate to fill the void, to chase after more of that heat spreading wherever they touched.

_ This is wrong _ , a voice murmured in the back of her head, but she couldn’t stop. She didn’t think she had the willpower to pull away when Dr. Riddle finally returned the kiss, his teeth catching on her bottom lip before sucking the flesh into his mouth. 

“Fuck,  _ Hermione _ .”

Hermione’s was on him in seconds. She released her hold on his hands, no longer afraid that he’d push her away when his fingers were clawing her out of her blouse and dragging down the small zipper of her skirt.

She had him, and she refused to let him go. Not until he was inside her, until he was buried so deeply within her that she could never forget how he felt nestled in her cunt.

She tore his shirt open, the sound of buttons hitting the ground like gunshots in the room. She wanted to feel him, and feel him she did, hands splaying along his chest, savoring the way his body shuddered beneath her hands before dragging her nails down his stomach to rest on the button of his trousers. 

The sound of cloth tearing rung in the room, but Hermione was no longer listening. Let it break. It didn’t matter. Only his hands did.

_ Touch me, please. _

Her fingers dragged his zipper down, and Hermione moaned when he pushed her back onto the medical bed, until her legs were splayed out, open to his gaze. She had half a mind to be embarrassed, to flush a bright red when his hand cupped her cunt before parting the silky material of her underwear.

“ _ We shouldn’t _ —” Riddle started, but Hermione would not abide it. He could have second thoughts after, but not before she had him and not a moment before. An impatient sound grumbled from her throat.

“Please,  _ Tom— _ just,” Hermione dragged her hand up to finish unbuttoning her top, finishing what he had not been able to accomplish. Her bra shimmered white beneath the fluorescent light, a devious curl over her lips when his mouth parted but no words came.

Hermione didn’t remember putting it on, but now, at this moment, she was glad that she did. It was more than appropriate. 

With her legs spread, she was the willing sacrifice open for his inspection. Aching for his teeth to bite into her neck, for his hands to palm her flesh and collect the honey pooling between her thighs. This was what she wanted, what she’d been desperate for since she first rode out to his office—

Here, in this glorious instance with his gaze appraising her, his tongue sliding against his bottom lip, she was free of the nightmares. Her thoughts were empty, her fears and anxieties silenced. With him, the monster would not come. Riddle would keep it away.

“I need this— _ need  _ you. Let me have this.”

His dark eyes were conflicted, caught between devouring her whole and resisting the impulse. Hermione whined, yanking down the cups of her bra to reveal her swollen breasts. Her thumbs grazed the hardened peaks, slow and teasing, her eyes at half-mast with desire.

That was all the encouragement he needed. 

His hands were at her waist, dragging her to the edge of the bed. Hissing in pleasure, Hermione’s back arched when his fingers found her center, thumb circling over her clit with easy strokes that left her dripping for him.

It was a shock to her system, her fingers dragging up to pinch her own nipples, to please herself while he teased her, two of his fingers finally burying inside her. The fact her legs were tangled in her underwear mattered little when his face was so close to her cunt, when he pressed forward to suck a harsh kiss into her inner thigh.

“ _ Fuck _ ,” Hermione clamped her hand over her mouth to stop herself from screaming, from being heard by the only nurse still left in the building. But Riddle would not abide it, he yanked her hand from her mouth, slamming the offending appendage against the mattress.

“No, I want to hear you come apart on my fingers.”

His fingers curled inside her, thumb rubbing her clit raw, and Hermione’s mouth fell open into a silent scream. Her insides clenched around him, a pressure building deep in her navel that could not be stopped.

It was too much. The side of his fingers curled inside, pushing against her g-spot mercilessly, the heat of his breath on her skin roasting her alive—

_ Christ _ , she was going to come apart if he kept this up.

“N-no, not your fingers—” Hermione’s words melted into a loud whine when he added a third finger, increasing his speed until she couldn’t hope to keep up, her hand clenching onto his. Violently, he ushered her toward her orgasm, his eyes trained on hers as she tried to hold onto her control, to stop herself from falling over the edge.

Another scream tore from her lungs when his teeth bit into her thigh, hard enough to bruise, to make her head slam back into the bed.  _ God _ , she hoped no one walked in on them. She doubted she would survive the mortification. The nurse had already given her a reproving look for coming in a  _ mess _ . The last thing she needed was the nurse to come running in, wondering if Hermione was having a mental breakdo—

“No?” Riddle’s eyes had gone feral, his cheeks flushed with his exertions and desire when he pulled away from her quivering thigh. He looked beautiful this way. Handsome. More human than the ethereal creature he made himself off to be.

_ Like this, she didn’t have to fear that she was corrupting something precious. Something holy. _

“What do you want, Hermione?  _ Say it _ .”

He was brutal. Pace slowing when she came too close, when she could taste the orgasm in the back of her mouth, like melted chocolate on her tongue. Her fingers itched to touch herself, nearly giving in to the impulse when he stopped, his thumb tracing light shapes against her clit.

She didn’t dare. There was something in his gaze that told her that he’d leave her, empty and high off the endorphins, if she tried. She wouldn’t risk it, call his bluff, even when he hadn’t made such a threat. He didn’t need to speak it for her to know that he’d keep her on the edge the whole bloody evening.

Squirming beneath him, Hermione’s eyes fluttered shut to consider how to ask, to find the courage and nerve to say what was on her mind. This wasn’t new. This desire, this hunger, it had always been there. Lingering, always waiting, for her to make it known. But—

Dare she? Was she brave enough to voice what she wanted him to do to her since her mouth had touched his, since her hands had yanked at his trousers, to reveal more of his milky skin?

“I-I want you to fuck me,” Hermione said between pants, a frustrated huff leaving her when his fingers slowed, his thumb now ghosting over her clit. She tried to push him closer, to drag him to the swollen heat between her thighs.

He did not budge. Like stone, he held his hand still as she tried not to snap with her mounting frustration.

“Where?” He asked, pulling away to stand between her parted legs. Reflexively, her legs closed around him, trapping him between her knees. Still, he did not move an inch closer, to line the hardness straining against his trousers with her wet cunt.

He wouldn’t until she gave him what he wanted.

“Here?”

His fingers slipped out of wet cunt, only to drag down to the cleft of her arse, index finger poking at her wrinkled hole. Hermione tensed, a shocked sound rumbling in her chest when he traced over the rim, pinky poking over the rosebud of her arse until she was squirming underneath him for an entirely different reason.

“Or, perhaps—”

A devious glint flashed over his eyes, and Hermione back arched off the bed when he stuffed his three fingers into her cunt, thumb neglecting her swollen clit. 

“ _ Here _ ?”

_ Fuck _ . Hermione was going to lose her mind.

“Tom, please. I-I want you inside me. I want your cock inside my-my—”

Hermione wasn’t new to dirty talk, but this was different somehow. This—she wasn’t just naked in front of him, but  _ vulnerable.  _ He was her doctor, knew her better than she even knew herself, and now—

“Your  _ cunt _ , is that right?”

Hermione screamed this time when he crooked his fingers inside her, ripping out her first orgasm of the evening. She hadn’t expected it, but  _ christ.  _ Her vision had gone white, her ears flooded with the sound of heavy rain. 

She blinked, her vision spinning and dark spots dancing along her gaze. That had been—Hermione didn’t have the words to express it. 

Riddle slipped his fingers from out of her, a shock of lightning curling up her spine when he sucked his wet fingers into his mouth his eyes trained on hers.

“ _ Exquisite.” _

The sight was obscene, made her flush scarlet with arousal, but she didn’t look away.

His mouth made a loud pop when he pulled them out of his mouth, and Hermione watched, misty-eyed, as he dragged his fingers down his stomach leaving a thin trail of his saliva and her juices on his bare skin.

“Tom, just—”

His hand delved into the opening in his trousers, pulling his cock free from the material.

Hermione sucked in a short breath at the sight of his cock, high off her own release and the devious curl of his mouth.

“Spread your legs, darling.”

_ Fuck. _

She didn’t need to be told twice. In seconds, she parted her legs, relishing in the tantalizing view of his cock lining up against her, blunt end dragging down her slit to rub at her sensitive clit and hole. Closing her eyes, her stomach quivered with anticipation.

“Yes, that’s right. Let me in, little Hermione.”

She spread her legs wider, drunk off the smell of her own arousal and his sweat, and the pleasure flowing through her veins. The moniker hardly registered, the sly words like a compulsion, a prayer with how his voice shook.

“ _ Please _ —”

Everything melted away and twisted before her eyes.

The hospital room, Tom Riddle, the clinical mattress at her back: it was as if she’d been wrenched from out a particularly lucid dream—

When she came too, Hermione wished she’d never woken up.

_ No. _

A monstrous, serpentine creature loomed above her, hands clasping her hands above her head. Its red eyes were trained on her face, watching her with something akin to fondness and cruel amusement. Choking, Hermione couldn’t breathe, couldn’t suck it in fast enough to—

Hermione screamed, back arching off the bed when the monster pushed inside her, the burn of the stretch too much and too little at the same time. Terror consumed her, the ecstasy shocked her. It was like being plunged in ice cold water, and Hermione wanted nothing more than to go back to sleep, to wash out the image manifesting before her very eyes.

_ Oh god, oh god, oh god— _

“Oh, my poor girl.”

Tears burned at the corners of her eyes, but they did not fall. She refused to let them, choosing to swallow her sobs in her throat.

_ No. No. No. _

A moan fell from her lips when he pulled back, his cock dragging along her walls, rubbing her  _ raw _ , before thrusting back inside, nudging her just the right way to have her eyes rolling to the back of her head.

It burned her from the inside out. It was unlike anything she’d ever felt before.

A clawed hand cupped her cheek, nails digging into the skin hard enough to draw blood, to leave scars and welts along the surface. But Hermione couldn’t think past the slick slide of his cock inside her, of the serpentine visage gazing back at her. 

The pain was inconsequential, utterly meaningless, when he rocked into her, the bed rattling beneath them with each snap of his hips.

_ Monster. Monster. Monster.  _

This wasn’t the same creature she’d seen in her nightmares. Far from it. This was— _ he  _ was different. More human, more  _ monstrous  _ than the other. Intelligent. There was life in his eyes that hadn’t otherwise been there before.

It was the most terrifying thing she’d ever seen in her life.

“You’ve fought so valiantly.”

Hermione sobbed when his nails dragged down her cheek, to her heaving chest. His touch burned her to a crisp, like sulfuric acid on an open wound. And yet—

Hermione clenched around him, unable to stop herself from arching into him when he kept pounding away inside her, kept tearing sound after fucking sound from her mouth. She wanted to sew her lips shut, to bite her tongue and never speak again.

“W-wh-who—?” Hermione moaned when his hand fell away from her chest, flicking her nipple, to the wet mess of her cunt. His thumb fingered her clit, twirling it around in the same manner she did when she touched herself, and Hermione’s toes curled. She couldn’t think past the pressure. 

It was as if she’d been submerged underwater, had been left to drown in  _ him _ . He was in her head, in her skin, an insistent thrum like a beating heart that refused to die.

_ Please. Someone help me. _

The creature cocked his head to one side, his mouth stretching into a predatory smile. Gasping, Hermione watched him lean in, invade her space until his mouth was on her ear, his hot breath curling against her sweating neck.

Gooseflesh broke out on her arms, a startled gasp leaving her, when he rolled his hips to smash into that spot inside her, no longer nudging, no longer easing her down the rabbit hole of hysteria. Hermione was so close to her release her teeth ached, but  _ god _ , did she fight it.

_ Harden yourself _ . She begged, she screamed, endlessly.  _ Fight it. _

Hermione threw her head back, smashing into the pillow beneath her, eyes burning with shame and ecstasy when he pulled and pushed back inside her, a hand grasping onto her thigh to spread her wider.

_ Pull and push _ . 

He knifed her down, pounded into her, splintered her, until she wasn’t sure when she began and he ended. 

His finger paused over her clit, now gentle and soft. Consciousness flooded her instantly, like a breath of fresh air after minutes underwater. His cock buried in and out of her ruthlessly, her legs little more than useless limbs lying on her bed, but Hermione could see him—

Intelligent red eyes, a serpentine face, and closed-lipped smile: the image couldn’t have been more clear. 

“Lord Voldemort—”

_ What _ ?

Hermione didn’t understand, couldn’t piece together what those two words hissed into the hollow of her throat could mean.

“My  _ name _ , little Hermione, is  _ Lord Voldemort _ .”

It was a soft croon this time, a honeyed hiss, and—

His fingers pinched her clit hard.

Hermione screamed herself hoarse, body convulsing beneath his, the sound melting into a choked sob when she came a second time, forced over the edge—

And into deep, unfathomable black.

* * *

 

_ Tick. Tock. Tick.  _

Riddle didn’t know what to expect when he received Hermione’s call. She’d been hysterical, inconsolable over the phone and he’d been at a loss at how to handle it. He was accustomed to screaming patients, to families calling at unmentionable hours for an emergency visit when required, but this—

Riddle had never before been this concerned over a patient. He’d been  _ rattled  _ by her voice, at the way she’d begged him to let her come over, to speak to him, even if it was beyond working hours.

It was toeing a fine line to allow a patient to see him at his home at three in the morning. And yet, Riddle had not said no. He did not reject her request to see him, even when he knew full well that he should have and now—

_ Tick. Tock. Tick. _

Riddle was waiting, sitting on his loveseat for the girl to show.

His phone came to life in his pocket, buzzing away in his hand. Hermione flashed over the caller ID, and Riddle knew within moments that she had arrived. No one ever bothered knocking, foregoing that societal expectation when a phone was a more convenient announcement.

“I’m here.”

The text message read, and Riddle’s lip twitched. 

_ Honestly. _

Huffing, Riddle stepped around his chair, bypassing the small coffee table at the center of the room. It didn’t take him long to reach the front door, but still, he paused, unnerved by the eerie stillness at his front door. 

He didn’t know why it bothered him, why he was having such second thoughts. This was just Hermione—it wasn’t the first time he’d seen a patient in his own home.

_ But never one you’ve felt more than a professional interest in _ …

Riddle banished the thought, cursing something foul under his breath. This was neither the time nor the place for this sort of mental warfare. Hermione had been in hysterics.

Riddle removed the deadbolt from the door, before quickly opening the door.

“I apologize for not responding but—”

Hermione pushed the door open before he could finish, letting herself in like she was the proper resident of his apartment rather than a visitor. 

“Doctor.”

Hermione stepped further into his apartment, and Riddle paused, finally noticing that she was dressed in a silken nightgown and barefoot. Her hair was a like a lion’s mane around her shoulders, and Riddle wondered, for the second time that evening, if it had been a mistake to let her see him at this hour.

Just from the looks of her, she didn’t seem herself.

“Hermione?” Riddle asked, unsure of how to proceed when she had yet to turn around, her attention engrossed by something in his living room. Or more precisely, on something sitting atop the shelves adjacent to the sitting area and the front door. 

“You have a lovely home, doctor,” Hermione said, voice warm and pleasant. It was unlike the desperate sound on the phone earlier, and Riddle wondered if perhaps  _ he  _ was the one losing his mind. “It’s very elegant and tasteful.”

“Hermione, perhaps you might—”

Hermione turned then, and Riddle’s voice died in his throat. She looked wild beneath the dim lights of his living room, her eyes so bright they were almost glowing. 

Her head cocked to one side when he had yet to say a word, tongue-tied at the state of her attire—or better yet—lack of. 

The nightdress did nothing to cover her chest, her dusky nipples visible through the thin fabric. The dress barely reached mid-thigh, and though he should have noticed that from the moment she stepped in, well—

It was one thing to watch her from behind and entirely another to be hit with the full sight of her, her mouth curling into a tiny smile.

“Are you alright?” Riddle didn’t know what to say, what else to ask. Never before had he been rendered this at a loss for words. And he was more than accustomed to the natural unpredictability of his profession. 

“Never better.”

Hermione’s smile twisted into a smirk, eyes flashing at him with a devious glint. Riddle didn’t recognize the person in front of him. She was smiling but, her eyes—

They were as cold as ice.

“In fact—”

Hermione stepped toward him, and Riddle, despite the sheer height difference between them both, took one back. Something about her was odd. Different. It made his brain itch, made his insides churn with something like unease.

Riddle didn’t like it.

“I might feel much better after a warm cup of tea, though. Wouldn’t you agree?”

Riddle’s mouth opened and closed, before he settled on nodding, moving away from her gleaming eyes to fetch the warm kettle he’d left out in the stove. He’d been certain to brew something calming, anticipating that he would spend most of the night trying to console a terrified Hermione. Now, however, Riddle wasn’t sure the tea was necessary.

_ Lovely.  _

He was back in the living room within moments, kettle in hand. The cups were already at the small coffee table, and Hermione, having sensed where he had planned for them to chat, was already waiting for him there.

She was sitting in the tallest chair. The one he often used when he was in need of a moment to think, to ponder about his latest cases or his own independent research. The fact that she had selected that one, as opposed to the others he owned, made something turn in his stomach.

It was a warning.

“That smells lovely, doctor,” Hermione said, hand outstretched to take the kettle from his hands. After a short pause, his eyes peering at her as if he could uncover all of her secrets from her face alone, he handed it over, a shudder running up his spine when her fingers touched his, tracing along the digits. “Is it Earl Grey?”

Her fingers were cold to the touch. Like how he imagined death would feel like after centuries of reaping souls. It wasn’t a pleasant association in the least, and Riddle tried not to rub his hands together to chase that chill away.

That would just be rude. 

“Yes, it is my own personal blend. There is a tea shop nearby that I buy the leaves from.”

Hermione hummed in assent, pouring a generous amount into her cup before setting the kettle down. The click of metal clinking on wood made his nerves jolt.

Riddle’s gaze narrowed when Hermione’s lip twitched, amused, her eyes bright with her laughter. 

_ Something’s wrong. _

“How lovely. I’ll be sure to pay it a visit sometime.”

Frowning, Riddle reached for the kettle, only to freeze in his tracks when Hermione’s hand clasped his wrist, fingers digging into the skin.

A chill swept through him immediately at the contact.

“Dr. Riddle,” Hermione began, her other hand sliding away from the table to trace her nails along his other hand lying on the table. Riddle was rooted in place, frozen in shock by both her daring and something else—

It was as thick as molasses in the back of his throat. Sweet and bitter. It choked him. 

“You are incredibly handsome, did you know?” 

Riddle couldn’t speak, his voice lodged somewhere in his esophagus. Trapped. 

“And your mind, too. It’s  _ delicious.  _ The knowledge that you have, the power that you hold over men and women alike.” 

Hermione’s eyes had gone half-mast, her voice sultry and warm. Riddle wanted to snatch his hand away, but something kept him rooted in place, frozen. It sapped him of his will. 

It terrified him. For the first time since leaving that orphanage, since being confronted with death, Riddle was  _ scared _ . 

“W-wh—”

Hermione pressed closer, her hand cupping his cheek. 

“ _ Shhh _ .”

Hermione stood from her seat, her hand releasing his wrist to trail up his forearm, to twirl around his elbow, and stop at his shoulder. She squeezed it between her fingers, her eyes widening with wonder when he twitched, but didn’t otherwise move.

_ Why can’t I—? _

“Perfect, beautiful  _ vessel _ .”

Hermione shoved him back, and he fell into his chair with a silent ‘oof.’ A beatific smile was wide on her face, and Riddle could only watch, both fascinated and horrified, as she stepped around the coffee table and then pushed him into his chair, caging him in until she was atop his lap, her hands at either side of his head.

“We shall rule the world, you and I.”

Her eyes rolled to the back of her head, and Riddle had one split second to gasp, to jerk in her arms, before her lips were on his, her breath flooding into his lungs until his chest began to burn with strain—

A flash, a terrified scream, a haunted  _ ‘no’ _ and he was falling down a rabbit hole, into a sea of red.

The corners of his eyes burned, going in and out of focus. A moan, and he was clutching her closer, desperate for air, for her taste. 

_ More. More. More.  _

Her tongue curled in his mouth, and he bit it, hungry. Desperate for the  _ red, red, red _ of it on his tongue. 

Screaming echoed in his mind, blurred the face reflected in her eyes, thickened the murky red of her gaze, and Riddle, Riddle,  _ Ridd _ —

His pulled her closer, ground against her, hot and swollen in his trousers. Desperate for her, his hands slipped underneath her thighs to part them, starved for the warm clench of her cunt.

Inhumane eyes gazed back at him, and Riddle suffocated, choked, and gagged when her hands wrapped around his throat and squeezed until his skin stung, until rivers of red ran down the sides of his neck.

He unbuttoned his trousers, a shaky hand unzipping his pants to release his cock from the constriction. He was terrified, choking and suffocating in her mouth, beneath her hands, and yet—

He sheathed himself inside her, and his eyes fluttered closed for one brief second, crushed by the tight maw of her cunt.

_ More. _

High-pitched laughter echoed in his brain, and Riddle sank, stomach squeezing so tight with ecstasy and pain, he didn’t fight it.

He was falling, drowning,  _ dying _ , and still, he ground into her, basked in the wet  _ squelches  _ interspersed between her vicious laughter.

“You’re mine.”

_ Mine. Ours. Mine. Yours. Us. We. Mine. Mine.  _ **_Mine._ **

_ Yours. _

And then, the world went silent.

* * *

 

“Ms. Granger?” 

The voice echoed in her head, loud and crisp. It was louder than the darkness swallowing her vision, than the weight pulling her down, dragging her into the nothing.

It was a lot like being asleep, deep asleep. She nestled into it, unwilling to abandon the warmth surrounding her.

“Ms. Granger, I know you’re awake.”

Was that her name? Hermione couldn’t tell. It sounded right, but—was that really her? 

“You idiot! You gave her too much. She’s barely responsive.”

Another voice rung through the haze—oh, that was what this was, she realized. She was in a dark, nebulous cloud. Hermione clung to it, unwilling to let it go.

“Is this what you call help? He’s just like all those other damn doctors.”

The man was angry. His voice hurt her ears, made her heart rush through her veins in a way she knew wasn’t normal. Because how could it? How could her heart want to burst right out of her chest?

Just who was he? Who  _ were  _ they?

“Hermione.” The voice was closer now, bleeding through the shadows until she could almost taste the syllables in the back of her tongue. “It’s me. It’s Harry. Please wake up.”

_ Harry? _

“She won’t wake.”

A third voice rang out and—

Hermione was screaming. Her memories hit her all at once. 

_ Red eyes, Dr. Riddle, pale skin, and serpentine tongues. _ Tears burned at the corners of her eyes but did not fall.  _ Slick tongues, hot hands, nails rolling over frail skin. _

Hermione didn’t stop screaming, refusing to open her eyes when the voices did not stop. They were yelling, pulling at her. 

“NO! Stop!” 

Tears were running down her cheeks. They were hot and heavy, unmistakable. She could taste the salt where the tears slipped into her mouth, and she wanted to vomit it all up.

“Hermione! It’s me,  _ it’s me _ .”

A hand caught her shoulder, and Hermione didn’t hesitate. She lashed out, clawing and fighting against the many hands now pulling at her shoulders and legs. They were everywhere, but still, she fought them.

_ No. No. No. _

She was dreaming again. She was asleep and the monster was here.

She could feel him.

“Enough.”

Like a puppet whose strings have been cut, Hermione collapsed. A breath rushed out of her, and finally, to her horror—

She opened her eyes and saw white.

The room was empty of color save for the three figures holding onto her, tying her down with some leather straps attached to the mattress she was lying on. It was comfortable, but the harrowing sight of her mobility being hindered, made her nerves flare with unease.

Everything about this room was unfamiliar yet not. Like she had been there before, in some faraway time, at a time when she could make the most sense of things. 

“Hermione.”

Hermione slowly turned her head, ignoring the concerned green eyes that tried to catch her attention. It couldn’t be helped. Even if she wanted to catch Harry’s eyes, she couldn’t resist the compulsion to look at the man standing by the doorway. It was the only true exit to this world of white.

“Tom.”

Her mouth was dry, but the name still rolled off her tongue with no issue. She had said his name once before—had spoken it in her waking hours, when she was most vulnerable. His name was etched onto her soul, was burned into her mind. It should have disturbed her how easy his name came, when Harry’s own voice had not evoked not a single twinge of recognition.

But this was them.

His dark eyes took her in, watching her,  _ devouring _ her whole, and lighting her blood on fire all at the same time. It was amazing how something so simple could make her blood run cold and hot all at once.

“Welcome back to the waking world. We’ve been waiting.”

Riddle smiled, all pearly white. He was, in every conceivable way, the picture of innocence and masculine elegance. With his loose dark curls, tamed to perfection, and his face as white as snow: he was an angel.

_ He’s here. Waiting. _

There was static in her brain. An itch that throbbed, that burned to snatch at her attention. They were words, memories long since past.

_ Waiting for you to see. _

No. He was no angel.

The face staring back at her, the creature  _ watching  _ her through the skin of a beautiful man, was all razor sharp points and red, gleaming eyes. The devil incarnate, a  _ monster _ , he was—

_ Lord Voldemort. _


End file.
